I’ve been an unapologetic shill for Bernie Sanders, writing articles, sending small donations and attending rallies, but after the recent debacle in my home state of Nevada, coupled with undeniable delegate math, it has became clear to me that Bernie cannot win the nomination. It’s sad for his supporters, like me. But what is more troubling is the heated, false and sometimes vile rage coming out of some Bernie supporters, as they grow ever more frustrated at the loss. I’ve worked hard in my own life to embrace progressive values, and the rhetoric coming from some parts of my own community reminds me of the Tea Party.

Bernie should give a rousing speech at the convention and hammer hard at the party platform. He’s changed the conversation for a decade or more, but there is a fine line between supporting a candidate and adopting fact-denying, slanderous behavior that we rightfully condemn when it’s spewed from the right.

I’m from this state and had many friends who attended the Nevada Democratic Convention, both for Hillary and Bernie. I was a precinct captain at the Nevada caucus. When my “side” won the caucus by a card draw, there were no hard feelings. Hillary supporters are my friends, family, coworkers and people I care about. My wife is for Hillary. As I watched the state convention implode, I was just relived that I didn’t attend. There is no good, none whatsoever that comes from creating more hate and discontent in a nation already drowning in outrage.

Despite my warm, abiding love for Bernie, I can count. Hillary won Nevada, and she won the state convention. She has won more states and votes than my guy. It’s sad, but I’m not a poor loser. Nevada Bernie supporters are furious they weren’t able to wrest more delegates from a state that Sanders lost. We are better than this. Bernie and his movement have done great things, but all the hard word work and his important message will be lost if our country ends up moving backwards because of this petty, intraparty battle. This sideshow has taken the attention away from the real crazy.

It turns out Ben Carson isn’t the only 2016 republican presidential candidate who has the embarrassing distinction of giving paid speeches to pyramid scheme companies. New disclosures from the finances of Donald Trump reveal that he gave a six figure paid speech last year to a multilevel marketing or pyramid scheme company, calling into question not only the timing, but just what he might be hiding in the transcripts.

There is some debate across as to just how thoroughly the company in question, ACN, fits the traditional label of a pyramid scheme. But Donald Trump’s involvement nonetheless raises eyebrows. This is far from the first time he’s given paid speeches to the company in question. But his speech last February, which netted him nearly half a million dollars, came just four months before he officially entered the race for President. The nature of the company, as well as the high speaking fee involved, has led some to wonder just what kind of speech Trump may have been giving. Now we know why Hillary Clinton has preferred to hang onto her own Wall Street speeches as leverage down the road rather than releasing them during primary season. She has stated that she’ll be willing to make her transcripts public only when Trump releases his own, and she’s hinted that the content of his paid speeches may be far more problematic than hers.

Among other eyebrow raising details in Donald Trump’s latest disclosures: he’s still claiming that his golf course could be worth anywhere from $1 million to $50 million, suggesting possible shenanigans on property appraisals. And he’s also an investor in at least three major corporations that he criticized by name during the course of the republican primary race.

But Trump’s paid speech to a pyramid scheme in the same year he entered the race for President may end up drawing the most attention. His former opponent and now ally Ben Carson faced backlash for giving speeches to a company which had been busted by the government for making misleading claims about a supposed cancer cure.

This is the moment of truth for Bernie Sanders and his supporters. It’s the moment that determines whether everything they’ve accomplished to this point is translated into real power and real change, or fizzles into nothing, leaving behind only bitterness and resentment. And right now, the latter course is looking much more likely.

What happened in Nevada over the weekend was an expression of some key features of the Sanders campaign, even if it involved only a small number of Sanders supporters taking things to an extreme that most of them would never contemplate. It showed just how hard it’s going to be to convert the campaign into a lasting enterprise that has any influence over American politics. And at the moment, Bernie Sanders himself — the one person with the power to shape where this movement goes from here — hasn’t shown that he understands what’s happening or what he ought to do about it.

To briefly catch up: In February, Hillary Clinton won the Nevada caucuses over Bernie Sanders by a margin of 53-47. But because Nevada is one of the states with absurdly arcane procedures involving multiple conventions leading up to the party gathering that took place last weekend which chose the final allocation of delegates, both campaigns did their best to out-organize each other in an attempt to win a few extra delegates. After some arguing and disputes over credentials, the party finally awarded more delegates to Clinton. Sanders supporters basically went nuts, with a lot of yelling and screaming, some tossing of chairs, and eventually a torrent of harassment and threats aimed at the state party chair.

I’m not going to try to adjudicate what happened in Nevada, beyond saying that it looks like Clinton won the caucus, Sanders tried to work the system to grab some extra delegates, but then Clinton worked the system to grab them back, which doesn’t seem particularly unfair in the end. At the very least it was equally unfair to everyone.

Sam Wang
?@SamWangPhD
Mystified at complaints about Dems' nomination process. A reformer's dream: majority vote, party still gets some say. What's not to like?
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Marla BowersDavid BluefeatherAuld DragonValdiviaJack HarringtonChristina TruaxEliNat WJim Brown
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Sam Wang ?@SamWangPhD Apr 28
.@SamWangPhD Consider alternatives... 1) Winner-take-all races, which is an Electoral-College-type problem. This has brought the GOP grief.
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Sam Wang ?@SamWangPhD Apr 28
.@SamWangPhD 2) Imagine eliminating superdelegates...what, the party gets no say at all? One could do that...somehow I find that idea odd.
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Sam Wang ?@SamWangPhD Apr 28
.@SamWangPhD ...superdelegates could hypothetically choose between pop. vote-getter & Establishment candidate. This year, Clinton is both.
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Sam Wang ?@SamWangPhD Apr 28
.@SamWangPhD Obviously, it is bad for one's own choice to lose. But the current conflict looks like a normally functioning party at work.

Sam Wang
?@SamWangPhD
My G*d, are you people still writing about the Democratic primaries??

A central element of conservative conspiracy theories spread in the aftermath of the September 11, 2012 attack on our diplomatic facility and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, has been the myth that the military could have responded to the attack more quickly and therefore saved lives.

In the most outlandish version of this story, President Obama or Hillary Clinton ordered the military to “stand down” rather than come to the aid of the Americans who were under attack.

Earlier this week, a letter from two House Democrats to Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who is chairing the select committee investigating the Benghazi attack, revealed that the GOP’s own chief investigator acknowledged during the investigation that nothing “could have been done differently to affect the outcome in Benghazi.”

In an interview on Fox News today, Gowdy responded to this newly released information by acknowledging, “Whether or not they could have gotten there in time, I don’t think there is any issue with respect to that — they couldn’t.”

This conclusion is in line with the findings of previous Benghazi investigations. For example, after the House Armed Services Committee completed its investigation of the attack, Buck McKeon, the California Republican who was then the committee’s chairman, told reporters, “I think I've pretty well been satisfied that given where the troops were, how quickly the thing all happened and how quickly it dissipated, we probably couldn't have done more than we did.”

After spending more than two years and $6.9 million asking questions that have already been thoroughly answered, it is time for this investigation to conclude. At a minimum, those who propagated lies about the military’s ability to respond that night should now apologize.