Each and every Republican candidate first works to avoid the question, then says it’s not important because they will get the nomination and then they eventually give in and say they will live by their agreement. The Republicans have an escape route for discussing the issue because they signed an agreement. They don’t want to say it because they it sounds too much like conceding. I doubt any politician says they will endorse their rival while they are campaigning. Before, sure. After, sure. During, why look weak? Bernie and Clinton have no such agreement so I would not expect him to say he supports Hillary unconditionally.
I watched the clip. He is clearly talking about improving the Democratic Party. He has a vision for it and wants to use his influence to make it happen. I have no idea why that is regarded as a problem that he takes that position while he still feels viable as a candidate.
I’ll wait to see what he does come July (or August).
Sanders has a campaign strategy that he is going to follow through with. He’s not going to concede until it is complete. Personally, I think it’s good for the party.
Ben Carson is an MD commenting on Archaeology. Carpenter is a PhD commenting on a topic in his field, but I won’t defend it any further because as far as I can tell he wrote his dissertation and then went straight to blogging.
I don’t know about extortion, but if Clinton can’t clinch the nomination with just pledged delegates (okay, she’s allowed one superdelegate - Bill; okay, maybe two, if somebody reminds Jerry Brown about the early days of Proposition 13), I can almost envision something like this happening:
“The secretary will begin the roll call of states.”
“Alabama, 60 votes”
“Madam speaker, Alabama {insert state-based drivel here} casts 53 votes for Hillary Clinton and 7 for Bernie Sanders.”
“Alabama casts-” "ROLL CALL!"
(general moaning from the convention floor)
Now, I don’t think they actually call out the names of the delegates any more, since they have electronic voting, so what I think happens is, whoever asked for the roll call finds the names of the Superdelegates that voted for Clinton, and “reminds” them, either privately or over the convention PA system, “Do you really want to be voted out this November / primaried out in 2018?”
Repeat as necessary.
“Correction - Alabama casts 44 votes for Hillary Clinton and 16 for Bernie Sanders.”
“Alabama casts 44 votes for Hillary Clinton and 16 for Bernie Sanders.”
Skip to:
“Arizona casts 51 votes for Hillary Clinton and-” "ROLL CALL!"
a little more “caucusing” and “persuasion” later:
“Arizona casts 44 votes for Hillary Clinton and 41 for Bernie Sanders.”
The other states realize what is happening and the superdelegates quickly change their votes so the convention isn’t stopped for pretty much every remaining state, and with enough superdelegates, Bernie gets the nomination.
He hasn’t conceded yet so of course he didn’t say anything remotely like that. He’s still campaigning so he basically gave his campaign platform of what he wants. Also, LHoD’s description of the interview is correct. Part of his response was to the question (paraphrased) “what does Hillary have to do to get the progressive movement’s votes” and part “what do you want?”. Frankly, you seem mad that he hasn’t given up yet.
It’s also pretty lame that the cite in the OP is to a blogpost about a Huffpost article about a Young Turks interview. Why not link to the interview? Or did you not bother to watch it?
As for your proposed speech, that’s not at all what Sanders talks like. It’s not nearly irascible enough. He’ll probably say something like, “Listen, of course I’m gonna vote for Clinton, I’m not an idiot. Trump’s terrible. It’s not about who I vote for, though. We’ve got to get big money out of politics. Wages are stagnating! Do you know that one percent of AMerica controls 95 percent of our wealth? We’ve got to build a movement!” and so on.
The situation is nowhere near that extreme. He’s already been pulling her to the left, simply out of self-defense. But there’s no way she’s just going to espouse his more far-out schemes. The only ones who will be displeased by that will be that small, vocal hardcore for which there is nothing HRC could do correctly anyway. Assuming a scenario where it’s Clinton vs. Trump, the vast majority of his supporters will vote for her anyway.
Yeahrite…as if everyone in the running isn’t doing it out of his/her own selfish ambition. Let’s just say, not gonna happen.
Eh, Sanders can’t do a lot of real extortion. What he can do and has done is shown Hillary certain ideas have wide acceptance in the Democratic electorate, that has and will lead her to shift her positions. But she’s not going to be prostrating herself before him for an endorsement and replacing her positions with his positions 100% just to get said endorsement. Bernie just doesn’t have that much power. Jerry Brown threw a fit like this in 1992 and Clinton didn’t give him his way then, and Hillary Clinton won’t do that for Bernie either.
If this was a year where the Republicans were running a strong candidate Hillary might be more concerned, but it isn’t.
I’m voting for Clinton in the primary and (I’m assuming) again in the general. But I’d like to go on record that both Clinton and Sanders have some really laughable followers, and some really grotty ones as well.
Plus I don’t think a Bernie endorsement even matters that much. The vast majority (at least 87% in recent polling) of Sanders supporters will vote for Hillary if she’s the nominee. The rest, there’s a good number who will regardless because they don’t want Trump to be the President. The remainder? They probably will never vote for Hillary because they are “true believers.” But these are the people who probably would’ve voted for Jill Stein (or voted for Nader back in 2000) anyway, and they are only maybe 4-5% of the Bernie voting bloc which itself is only about 40% of the Democratic electorate (which is itself not the entire electorate, obviously.)
These die hards would even view Bernie as VP, and Hillary adopting his platform 100% as “not enough” they’d say she was just a lying panderer and would go to the far right as President. These are the people like Shayna (who posted here before it was obvious Bernie couldn’t possibly win) things like Hillary is the equivalent of Dick Cheney. Those “Never Clintons” aren’t in play, no matter what she does, and thus doing things that hurt her with centrists, swing voters, and independents (these three are not the same thing) makes no sense.
Not really. If that was exacted as a private concession, not even the craftiest reporters have been able to find any evidence of it. And even if it was, it was exacted privately, meaning it didn’t make Obama look weak before the election. That’s the whole point.
So you are predicting (and advocating) that even if Hillary gets more votes and more pledged delegates than Bernie, the superdelegates should step in and throw the nomination to her? Even though this is the opposite of what progressive groups have been arguing for in petitions and so on? :eek:
ETA: Martin Hyde, good points and very reassuring.
As far as supers are concerned, they are far more representative of the party core than any other group of delegates, and the fix was in for Hillary long ago. No way Bernie gets a majority of them (again, with the usual caveat of barring an act of God).
I agree, Martin Hyde. Bernie’s endorsement means little. The important thing is Hillary not actively alienating his supporters. She seems wise to that and thus not behaving like many of her supporters here do, ie she’s not acting all pissy that Sanders hasn’t dropped out and endorsed her already.
I think you’re overlooking the importance of voter turnout. Even if the vast majority of Bernie supporters would choose Hillary over Trump, elections are won or lost based on the narrow margins of how many of them actually get out there and vote vs staying at home.
I certainly hope that if Bernie isn’t the nominee, he’ll sincerely and actively encourage his fans to get out there and vote… and he’s more likely to do that, and do it more sincerely and actively and frequently, if Clinton seems to be trending leftward.
So you are saying that indeed never before has a losing contender for the Democratic nomination publicly threatened to not support the winner unless the winner reversed their public positions in favor of the loser’s?
Jesus christ, now he’s threatening? Amazing how you can get that from a question that didn’t even ask if he’d endorse Clinton, and from an answer that was nothing at all like you’re characterizing. And with such flourish! Bravo, sir, bravo.