After decisively losing the nomination of a party that was never his political home, Bernie Sanders is revealing egotism of practically Trumpian proportions.

Sanders insists that he deserves powerful sway over the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton, whom he savaged during the campaign as an “unqualified” stooge of Wall Street.

As they say at closing time: Bernie, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

Clinton, Sanders and aides met Tuesday evening in a session whose atmospherics call to mind Middle East negotiations. Additionally, on Thursday, Sanders was scheduled to address supporters — reportedly to rally his base to pursue his policy agenda rather than to suspend his campaign or endorse Clinton.

There’s no problem with the first three bullet points, though those are all based on state law and elections machinery. The Democratic Party has no control over them, which is why I now advocate for the party to wholly take over the primary process.

But the idea that it is “incomprehensible” that non-Democrats get to choose the Democratic nominee is, well, incomprehensible.

There is no point to a political party unless that party can decide for itself who represents it. It costs nothing to register as a Democrat (or Republican). No one even knows which party you register under. The only reason to register as an independent is because you think you are too good or pure or uncorrupted to be a member of a party. And if that’s the case? Good for you! We are all duly impressed. So shiny and perfect!

But fuck you, you don’t get to pick our candidates.

I don’t walk into a Shriners meeting, tell them they all suck and I hate their fez hats and cool stupid little parade cars, then demand a say in who leads the organization. That would be absurd and I’d be laughed out of the room. So why would anyone think differently about political parties? Yeah, I’m laughing Bernie’s idea out of the room.

You want a say in who a party nominates, join it. If you are too cool to join it, then you are too cool to have a say. Simple. Period. End of story.

Of course, Sanders’ list doesn’t include caucuses, which are an abomination of democracy and dramatically depressed turnout (and I wrote that piece before the Nebraska and Washington non-binding primaries, which had dramatically bigger turnout than the caucuses—even though they did not matter). I wonder why the guy who insisted on everyone voting would suddenly clamp down when discussing those undemocratic caucuses?

As for open primaries? Hell no. If you want a say, join the party.

Though the outcomes of the legislative votes are far from sure, the filibuster begun by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy has succeeded in bringing Republicans to the table for a pair of votes.

Senate Democrats ended a nearly 15-hour filibuster early Thursday after Republican Party leaders reportedly agreed to allow votes on two proposed gun control measures.
The votes will supposedly include a proposal to provide universal background checks, and another to prevent those on the no-fly list from obtaining weapons. The second bill apparently addresses the no-fly list, not the much larger terrorist watch list. These are both positions that have wide, bipartisan support in the public, but which Republicans have either blocked from a vote or voted down in the past.

Some 40 Senators took part in the talking filibuster before it was completed. Unlike the highly publicized Republican filibuster in which Ted Cruz recited Green Eggs and Ham, the content of this 14+ hour filibuster stayed on topic, with statistics, studies, and stories of other shootings filling the time.

As the filibuster approached conclusion, Senator Murphy brought it home with a heartbreaking story from the most notorious shooting in his own state.

... he told the story of Sandy Hook student Dylan Hockley and his teacher Anne Marie Murphy, who died trying to protect him.

"It doesn't take courage to stand here on the floor of the U.S. Senate… It takes courage to look into the eye of a shooter and instead of running wrapping your arms around a 6-year-old boy and accepting death," Murphy said. "If Ann-Marie Murphy could do that then ask yourself — what can you do to make sure that Orlando or Sandy Hook never, ever happens again."
Now the Senate gets a chance to demonstrate simple common sense. And to do their jobs.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her defeated rival Bernie Sanders met for nearly two hours last night, and both walked out of the room all smiles. Clinton went right back to focusing on her general election fight against Donald Trump and the national issues that currently face the nation. Sanders says he’s making a major announcement on Thursday night, and while some are expecting him to officially drop out, I don’t know that he will. And I’m starting to think it might be best for Hillary if he doesn’t immediately exit.

President Obama and Elizabeth Warren both endorsed Hillary Clinton last week and had an easy time of doing so, because they never opposed her to begin with. All they had to do was get up and tell their own respective support bases that it was time to get behind her. Bernie Sanders is in a different position. He’s spent the past fourteen months trying to convince his own base that he’s better at this than Hillary, that he’s going to change the party and change the way elections work, and all of these promises that his base is now expecting.

If he turns around this week and suddenly drops out and endorses Hillary, a number of his fans will feel whiplash, as if it were too soon and they didn’t get enough out of it, as if the entire movement had been for nothing. Instead, the best progression for Hillary may be if Bernie gradually nudges his fans in her direction between now and the convention. She can spend the next month throwing him one little bone after another, much of it either superficial or “concessions” on the issues that she already supported herself, aimed at allowing him to save face. Because the more face he can save, the more of his votes he can deliver to her.

There’s a reason President Obama was trotting Bernie Sanders around the outer corridors of the Oval Office, as if he were a visiting dignitary. There’s a reason that even the Senators who have never wanted anything to do with Bernie, such as Al Franken, are now making a point of talking about what a hero he’ll be when he gets back to the Senate. Almost no one in the party leadership likes or respects Sanders, but they know that if they can turn him into a momentary deity then his most devoted fans will feel that he’s being listened to, that he’s now a part of the leadership, and that they can now feel safe voting for the party’s nominee Hillary.

For those supporters of Hillary who are frustrated that Bernie hasn’t officially said he’s dropping out yet, here’s the kicker: there is no primary race any longer. Every state has voted. There is nothing for Bernie to compete in, nowhere for him to campaign, nothing to win or lose. Even if he says he’s still a candidate, he isn’t a candidate for anything. He’s just a free agent wandering around in search of an occasional microphone whose moment of relevance in this election has largely already passed him by. So as long as he’s not out there bashing Hillary and not talking about superdelegate fantasies, and he’s instead focusing his firepower on taking down Trump, he’s not actually hurting anything by pretending he’s still a candidate until the convention

During a brief statement in Washington on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders outlined four proposals to reform the Democratic Party. Those proposals are as follows, given in the order Sanders presented them.
1. Get new leadership at the Democratic National Committee.
2. Approve "the most progressive platform ever passed" at the Democratic National Convention in July.
3. Enact "real electoral reform" within the Democratic Party.
4. Get rid of superdelegates

But that is why Point No. 4 above is odd. Sanders fleshed out all of these points, of course, and to explain why he wanted to ban superdelegates, he noted that about 400 had pledged to Clinton before voting even began, echoing a common argument that this somehow affected the results of the ensuing contests. There's not really any evidence that it did: Clinton's strength among members of the Democratic establishment was clearly beneficial, and superdelegates overlap with that group, but I'd challenge you to find a significant population of voters in any state who would point to the raw count of superdelegates as having swayed their decision. Did Clinton romp in the South because black voters saw her superdelegate edge? Did she get demolished in New Hampshire because of it?

It is the job of the Democratic Party to gain new members who will then vote for Democratic candidates. To raise money from those members to help run campaigns on behalf of those candidates. In recent years, the number of people who identify with the party has declined; the number of people who identify with the Republican Party has declined slightly faster. In early 2005, there were more Republicans than Democrats and more Democrats than independents, according to Gallup. By January of this year, 26 percent of Americans identified as Republicans and 29 percent as Democrats. Forty-two percent called themselves independents. In other words: The party isn't getting its job done. (It's not getting the job done in state-level races, either, but that's a different discussion.)

From the standpoint of the party, though, Sanders's proposal would only make the problem worse. Allowing non-Democrats to vote in the Democratic primary might get voters invested in the candidate they support — but it wouldn't get them invested in the party. The party wants to identify people whom it can reliably turn out to vote in important contests; allowing people to vote in Democratic primaries without being Democrats doesn't help them with that identification. What's more, it doesn't build loyalty to the ticket. Democrats tend to vote for Democrats. Independents votes for ... whomever. (Although in practice they vote for the party with which they privately align themselves, outside of the pesky gaze of Wasserman Schultz.)

It's not weird to suggest that more people should get to vote in elections. It's somewhat weird to suggest that the party has a duty to let non-members help pick its nominee. It's very weird to suggest that the Democratic Party would want to intentionally weaken itself