NEWS: Bernie plans to participate in an April DNC debate-sign he isn't planning on dropping out soon

[The Magistrate]

83. What Do You Think Those Numbers Support, Sir?

At best you have a fifty/fifty break for 'to the convention', but the nominee was known in all instances and the vanquished could be counted on, save in 2016, to rally behind the victor. Not since 1972 has a convention been anything but a formality, and it was floor fights over dueling delegations gave '72 its rum flavor. By leaving out incumbents, you neatly elide the harm all observers agree was done by Sen. Kennedy's embittered contest to President Carter. No one suggests 'going to the convention' is the over-riding factor, and you overplay your hand in seeming to treat it as such. '76, for instance, was against an appointed incumbent in the wake of terrible scandal, '80 featured an acute and embarrassing foreign defeat, as well as a third party run of appreciable effectiveness, as well as disunity from a bitter run against an incumbent.

The nearest actual analogy to 2016 is '68, which you carefully start your count subsequent to. '68 certainly was far more bitter, but it was the same class of event, and many 'Bernie' supporters openly hoped to repeat the '68 in their own day. The idea of a 'fart-in' circulated among 'Bernie' supporters was beyond even the wildest clowning of the Yippies (Youth International Party). In both '68 and 2016 (as well as in '72), there was a serious effort made to disrupt the proceedings and damage the Party, with the chant 'Dump the Hump!' emerging from the '68 fracas. No one doubts this assisted Nixon, who if anything would probably have won even more decisively without Wallace's third party run. No one whose interests or political hopes are not served by the pretense imagines that the bad blood stirred by 'Bernie' had no effect on the outcome in 2016, which was such a close-run thing (like Florida in 2000) that a novel factor, even if it one grants its scope was small (which I do not) could achieve a decisive effect.

It is noticeable you do not engage the heart of the matter, namely that Sanders, then and again now, does not really run for the Presidential nomination, but to press an attack against the 'Democratic Establishment', which he views as a corrupt cabal whose chief aim is to stifle the left and thwart achievement of liberal and progressive goals. The man has said it often enough, people ought to do him the courtesy of believing him. That makes any attempt at comparison of 2016 with anything but '68 and '72 a matter of apples and oranges. And there is no room at all for doubt 'Bernie' intends to repeat his sabotage four years ago.






"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."