What I hope Adam Schiff's exemplary performance shows is the importance of co-equal branches

of government.

Some Representatives and more than a few Senators could take note that one does not have to be President in order to effect change and display leadership in the United States. The President is indeed the leader and head-of-state of America, but their power is, when checked properly by the other branches of government, not limitless.

We needs the Schiffs and the Pelosis...and the Bookers and the Swalwells...right where they are. I don't want to knock anyone's presidential ambitions if they truly think they can make a difference there and lead, just to point out that leadership in government exists in other places than that singular role.

Inquisitr again?

So, the user-generated aggregation site favored by Sanders supporters lately. Let's take a look at this byline...

Now that's actually a semblance of a point

Which is more than most have managed today, though I still disagree with it. The voters have chosen...or to be perfectly pedantic and precise, cause some around here like that, are about to choose...Hillary Clinton as the nominee.

Hell or high water, you dance with the one you brung. There would have to be absolutely, 100% crystal-clear dire doom afoot if we were to ever let a small group of people override the will of the primary voter, and I'm sorry but "I think my guy can beat the GOP" is not it. "She might be indicted" isn't it. Hell, let's pretend that Hillary literally was indicted, I'd STILL see it through, because the goddamn voters have picked it. We get who we deserve in a democracy, to paraphrase someone I don't care enough to google atm.

The only...literally the O-N-L-Y...scenario in the 40 years of the superdelegate existence I'd support the supers overthrowing the people would be if Lyndon motherfucking Larouche somehow wound up with the pledged delegate lead in one of his perennial campaigns. And that is only because I support any and all forms of disobedience, civil and otherwise, to disrupt racists. That's why I freely call for people to disrupt Trump's so-called "free speech" rights at his rallies.

If you're going to usurp a democratic process, you best be damn sure that bar is high. "Hillary might lose" is just a form of ends-justify-the-means

Why do Sanders supporters seem to want it both ways, regarding superdelegates?

The hue and cry for awhile now has been that superdelegates are an elitist group that can thwart the will of the voters, especially if they pledge to one candidate even though their state's primary or caucus is won by the other candidate. But, as Sanders is so far behind in the pledged delegate count and is almost certainly unlikely to catch Clinton in that area, his hope rests on wooing the superdelegates to his side despite that.

But this seems to raise a bit of a conundrum; is Bernie committing a bit of a moral faux pas if he solicits superdelegates from states that Hillary won? Should he feel obligated, on moral/ethical grounds, to refrain from contacting superdelegates in;

Alabama
American Samoa
Arizona
Arkansas
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Guam
Illinois
Iowa
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maryland
Massachusetts
Mississippi
Missouri
Nevada
New York
North Carolina
Northern Marianas
Ohio
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia

?

By my rough/quick count of the superdelegate list, there's 198 superdelegates in states that Bernie has won, of which he already has 27...but if we're to be fair he'll have to renounce the 13 that are from Hillary-won states. These calculations go by winner-take-all-the-supers btw; figuring out a proportional allocation would be a bit time-consuming atm.

So if Bernie plays by the right way to do things, can he get enough supers?

Pretty sure this lie was debunked a month or so ago, but I'll do it again

3,023,373 is the reported Hillary margin.


Around 230,000 participated in the Washington St. caucus; if Sanders carried the state at 72.7%, that'd be a net of 104,420.

122,000 for Colorado, a 59% win nets 21,960.

46,000 for Maine, 64.3% win nets 13,156.

We're at 2,883,837, with the rest that may not have been included in the total...Alaska, Wyoming will only add negligible amounts.

Many...many. many...more people have voted for Hillary Clinton than for Bernie Sanders this primary season. No amount of obfuscated #berniemath can affect #realmath.

The superdelegates traditionally vote for the person who wins the most pledged delegates

So their role can at most be described as rubber-stamped ceremonial.

At the beginning, particularly after NH, Camp Sanders smugly assumed that their populist message would carry the day, that he would win the most pledged delegates and the overall (though symbolic) popular vote. They stamped and screamed about the superdelegates who had already pledged to Hillary, demanding that they be dissolved or compelled to vote for him so as to not counter the will of the voting public. It was insider politics, collusion, and so on, if they supers did not switch to him at the convention.

But a funny thing happened along the way to Bernie's coronation; he found he has zero appeal with people of color, women, and registered Democrats, thus he is now in an practically insurmountable pledged delegate hole. his only chance now...irony of ironies...is for the supers to do what he feared they'd do for Hillary; jump ship and vote for who they wanted rather than who the voters wanted.

Food for thought; what if "the base" isn't what you think it is?

There's a common catcall around here that Clinton is out of touch with the progressive base, i.e all those people that prefer Bernie. But what if the party is shifting along with the demographics of much of the nation? The US is bit by bit becoming less- dominated by white, Christian males; Trump is having a field day capitalizing on that fear. So what if the more important base of the party starts to become people like this;




and this



and this



and not so much this;

Perhaps the Sanders supporters can try online threats, that seems to work well

1) Many AREN'T women, 2) Bernie himself called out the misogyny in his base

This encapsulates what is wrong with some Sanders supporters

When most of the African-American community decides to go with Clinton instead of Sanders, it can't be because they honestly believe in her message and vision. No, it must be because she tricked and hoodwinked them with lies and two-faced maneuvers.

Do you have any self-awareness here, of how demeaning that is to the A-A community? That they are easily duped rubes? Yes, "Bernie is simply offering us Bernie", and the majority of them did not agree with that. Sanders himself is an intelligent man, and no doubt will reflect on this after the election's over and think "what can I do do better appeal to this community of people"

He certainly will not take your tack and wonder "how did Hillary sucker these people away from me?"

What this primary season has show me so far is that Bernie Sanders, while he is not my #1 choice, is a fundamentally a good person. His supporters could learn a lot from him.