Sanders or bust

It could be argued that I seem pretty down on Sanders and his supporters, I have no idea why you would get that impression but there you have it. But I like him and support him, I bought the shirt, and put up with the half dozen emails a day from his campaign since without complaint, I support virtually all of his policy goals as well and I don't buy that they are unrealistic at all, if he is elected I totally believe he would be able to make good progress on his promises.

But I am also a realist, I don't think he is going to win for the reasons I stated last week, mostly just not enough people are actually voting for him, and that doesn't even count the superdelegates, which I think might actually be less of an issue than some, most of them being elected officials themselves and not wanting to lose their job if a more populist wave really does sweep the party. Which is why the shit the Clinton campaign and the DNC has gotten up to both sickens and puzzles me, sickens because of the blatant undermining of the process, an puzzles because I don't think they even needed to do it.

But I don't think he should drop out at all, many Democrats do think this, they say that with Trump seemingly gaining support that Clinton needs as much support now as possible and that basically we should start focusing on the election. While I admit the current polls present terrifying numbers I do not believe it is cause for that much alarm, people seem to forget that Sanders is still in the race, so Trump is polling against a divided party, and no I don't count the #NeverTrump movement as a divided Republican party, as much as I wish it was, it seems that the GOP might manage to stay intact for at least one more cycle.

But the primary is still going on, of course Clinton isn't going to poll like she will in the general, though I will admit it will probably be closer than I like, no one really likes these two candidates.

Enough about that though, Bernie should stay in the race until mathematically eliminated, and even then consider staying until the last state has voted, already we are starting to see him pulling the party to the left, Clinton's rhetoric has gotten steadily more liberal as the campaign progresses, which I know, still makes he to the right of any Republican from the early 90s, but it's progress. Also though the more delegates and influence he has, the more say he will have in the Democratic party platform when it is decided at the convention as well. That ain't nothin' folks, and has a fairly large effect on down-ticket races too.

I know people like to ridicule campaign promises as being just saying whatever you need to to win, but historically something in the neighborhood of three quarters of campaign promises are actually kept, or attempted to be kept anyhow. The more Sanders can get Clinton to slide to the left, the more likely we are to see some of his policies actually show up in 2017 even if he loses.

The point is, there is a point to supporting Sanders even though he isn't likely to win, and hell, he still has a chance and won't lose that until you stop supporting him anyway. The bust is a more left leaning Clinton campaign than we would have had otherwise, and there are certainly worse things in the world.

Like Trump.