Bernie Sanders can easily win the Democratic nomination by simply making an offer that the superdelegates can't refuse. He can tell them that if he isn't chosen as the nominee, he'll run as an Independent. If the Democrats were truly worried about Trump, Bernie can call their bluff.
If the Democratic Party were truly "all inclusive" and believed in "democracy", they wouldn't have closed primaries or superdelegates. If all Independents (and those with no party affiliation) had been allowed to vote in the Democrat's primaries, it's more than probable that Bernie Sanders would now have more popular votes and more "at-large" delegates than Hillary Clinton does today. As it is now, under current party rules, Hillary Clinton would STILL need superdelegates to "officially" clinch the Democratic nomination at the DNC's convention next month.
But if Bernie Sanders gave the superdelegates an ultimatum if they didn't vote for him, he could threaten to run as an Independent as a 3rd party candidate, completely destroying any chance at all that Clinton might have of winning the general election. Of course, all the establishment Democrats (the Clintons, Obama, Barbara Boxer, Claire McCaskill, Jeanne Shaheen, Barney Frank, Howard Dean, etc.) would all bitch and complain — and say that it's not very "democratic" of Sanders to use such dirty tactics — and they'd accuse him of subverting the "will of the people". But if everyone had been allowed to vote in the primary, it's really Sanders's supporters who had their own will subverted.
If the Democrats and the Clintons were REALLY afraid of Trump winning the presidency (rather than just losing their own political power), they would be forced to acquiesce to Sanders's demand. Otherwise, Bernie would have called their bluff about their fear of Trump, and expose their disingenuous fear-mongering as nothing more than a cheap political tactic.
The Democrats would accuse Sanders of political blackmail; but the Democrats and the Clintons had no problem at all using their own Mafioso tactics during Clinton's campaign. All politics is dirty, so maybe Bernie should play their game by playing by their rules — and use the same tactics. And Bernie is no Ralph Nader or Ross Perot — he has 12 million voters to back up his threat — and could even beat Clinton and Trump in a 3-way race. Call the Democrat's bluff!
Bernie Sanders has won more votes than anyone else has before in the Democratic primary ... all except for Obama and Hillary Clinton...
- 2004: John Kerry had 9,930,497 votes (who beat Vermont Gov. Howard Dean with 903,460 votes.)
- 2000: Al Gore had 10,885,814 votes (3rd party Ralph Nader had 2,882,995 votes in the general election.)
- 1996: Bill Clinton had 9,706,802 votes.
- 1992: Bill Clinton had 10,482,411 votes (3rd party Ross Perot had 19,743,821 votes in the general election).
- 1988: Michael Dukakis had 10,024,101 votes.
- 1984: Walter Mondale and Gary Hart each had 6 million+ votes.
- 1980: Jimmy Carter (who beat Ted Kennedy) had 10,043,016 votes.
- 1976: Jimmy Carter (who beat California Gov. Jerry Brown) had 6,971,770 votes.
- 1972: George McGovern had 4,053,451 votes and Hubert Humphrey had 4,121,372 votes.
- 1968: Eugene McCarthy had 2,914,933 votes and Robert Kennedy had 2,305,148 votes.
- 1964: Lyndon B. Johnson had 1,106,999 votes.
- 1960: John F. Kennedy had 1,847,259 votes.
Voter registrations were hitting record highs this year, so why are there so many fewer votes than the last Democratic primary? Voter fraud?
UPDATE:
ReplyDeleteA devatstating report on Clinton by ABC News was out today (link below). Could this finally be the smoking gun? If this doesn't end Clinton's campaign, what else could? The FBI investigation? It's odd that this wasn't mentioned in the media until AFTER the primaries and the day after Obama and Senator Warren had endorsed her. I have yet to hear MSNBC or CNN report on this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaf3Oo2K-mc
Here's what Donald Trump had to say about the report:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61AQ93I5HpA
How Bernie Sanders is FOR regular working people; and how Hillary Clinton is NOT Bernie Sanders's plan for expanding Social Security benefits for retirees and the disabled (and to extend the life of the trust fund) lifts the cap of $118,000 a year to $250,000 — which only affects the top 5% of wage earners. (Obama was for this in 2008 when he ran against Clinton, who has always opposed this.)
ReplyDeletehttps://berniesanders.com/issues/strengthen-and-expand-social-security/
Bernie Sanders's Medicare for All healthcare plan would be 2.2 percent income-based premium paid by households in their payroll taxes. A family of four making $50,000 a year (taking the standard deduction) would only pay $466 year. This is less expensive than insurance premiums and co-pays with ObamaCare. (Clinton calls this "pie in the sky", but the U.S. is the only major industrialize nation that doesn't have a similar plan because of lobbying by the healthcare industry.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/
Bernie Sanders's plan for free public college tuition (Trump's kids would still go to Ivy League Universities) imposes a tiny financial transaction tax on big Wall Street speculators — like the banks who ripped us that we bailed out and fined for mortgage fraud. (We already know all about Clinton's ties to Wall Street.)
https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-make-college-tuition-free-and-debt-free/
Bernie Sanders wants to raise the minimum wage to a "living wage" of $15 an hour because it's just not teenagers who are working summer jobs at McDonalds anymore, it's college graduates with student debt — with many who are raising children. (Clinton says she'll "support" $12 an hour.) https://berniesanders.com/issues/a-living-wage/ Offshoring our manufacturing base to Asia has decimated our job market and turned our economy into a service economy with mostly low-paying part-time/TEMP jobs — Wage data shows 50 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage, which is estimated to be $28,851 a year — X2 for dual-income household incomes = about what the "median household income" is today. (The Clintons supported all the trade deals that offhshored all our best jobs.)
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2014