Bernie Sanders’ Delusional Plan To ‘Steal’ Nomination From Hillary Clinton – OpEd

By

By Mitchell Blatt*

Bernie Sanders is delusional.

The socialist senator from Vermont who has long admired the Nicaraguan Sandinistas now thinks he can win the Democratic nomination at a contested convention.

After losing to Hillary Clinton in 25 of the first 43 primary contests, Sanders announced he was planning on contesting the nomination all the way to the Democratic National Convention. Sanders thought that by the end of April he had a wave of momentum, even though, at that time, Clinton had just won 4-out-of-5 of the contest held on April 26. Sanders had won 7-out-of-8 contests between May 22 and April 9. Now Sanders thinks he’s back on track after winning Indiana by just 5 percentage points (and 5 pledged delegates).

Pledged delegate count as of May 4, via Wikimedia, created by Wikipedia user Abjiklam.
Pledged delegate count as of May 4, via Wikimedia, created by Wikipedia user Abjiklam.

Sanders at a contested convention? The numbers tell a different story. Clinton leads in pledged delegates by 290 and in total votes by 3.2 million. Clinton is leading 56.2% to 42.3% in votes received. If you want to talk about “stealing” a nomination from the will of the people, that would be what Sanders would need the Democratic Party to do for him to win.

With no mathematical basis to claim victory, Sanders has been reduced to grousing about unfairness. Like his idea of the economy, Sanders claims the process is rigged. True, everyone—Sanders included—knew from November 7, 2012, the day after Obama’s reelection, that the Democratic Party establishment would be lining up behind Hillary in 2016. The Democratic National Committee did an exceptionally poor job of pretending to be impartial—down to the scheduling of a token number of debates on weekends when they would compete with NFL playoffs for viewers.

It’s also true that the Democratic Party has 712 super delegates who can vote as they wish—and almost all of them are choosing Clinton. Sanders views their choices as undemocratic.

“If I win a state with 70 percent of the votes you know what, I think I’m entitled to those super delegates,” he said on May 1, but that ignores the fact that the super delegates were given free choice for a reason: they can act as a check against demagogues and radicals.

In theory, even if Sanders were to win the popular vote, the super delegates could protect their party and country from the prospect of a Sanders presidency. Whether or not that would be “fair” is a moot point, however, because Sanders isn’t even winning the popular vote or the pledged delegates. He’s losing both by not insignificant margins.

Unfair as the process may have been, at the end of the day, it’s the voters who decide. Whining won’t change the rules and it won’t change the fact that a majority of the voters have shunned Sanders. Barack Obama, for one, didn’t base his improbable 2008 victory on whining.

“She will need super delegates to take her over the top of the convention in Philadelphia. In other words, the convention will be a contested contest,” Sanders also said.

True enough, the super delegates, consisting, as they do, of 17.5%, of all delegates, will be necessary for either of the candidates to reach a majority, but what Sanders doesn’t say is that even if the super delegates break proportionally to the popular votes, Clinton would still win. For Sanders to win—barring an unlikely string of wins by close to 60% of the vote (numbers he has only hit in two state primaries)—he would need the super delegates to vote opposite to the will of the public.

Why can’t Sanders win the super delegates? Maybe it’s because the same candidate who is delusional about his prospects to win the nomination also has no idea how he would be able to carry out his promises like breaking up the big banks or paying for universal college and healthcare.

After his disastrous interview with the New York Daily News, I remarked, “In all likelihood all of those theories will remain hypothetical, because he will never win the nomination, especially not after 700 super delegates, legislators and party leaders who have practical concerns, read his interview with the Daily News.”

The same candidate who answered “I don’t know” to questions about how he would implement so many of his policies also doesn’t know how he’ll snatch his party’s nomination from the more qualified leader. He doesn’t know, but he believes.

About the author:
*Mitchell Blatt moved to China in 2012, and since then he has traveled and written about politics and culture throughout Asia. A writer and journalist, based in China, he is the lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong guidebook and a contributor to outlets including The Federalist, China.org.cn, The Daily Caller, and Vagabond Journey. Fluent in Chinese, he has lived and traveled in Asia for three years, blogging about his travels at ChinaTravelWriter.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @MitchBlatt.

Source:
This article was published at Bombs and Dollars

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6 thoughts on “Bernie Sanders’ Delusional Plan To ‘Steal’ Nomination From Hillary Clinton – OpEd

  • May 11, 2016 at 11:04 am
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    This is a wrong title. Senator Sanders is trying to beat the lady of the financiers, not to steal the election. There is a probability that he will win. She was giver 500 super delegates by the Democratic Party without people election. Even her Husband, a war criminal who was bombing Iraqi children to cover his sexual relationship, is one of the super delegates: conflict of interest. The Democratic Party has shown through the appointment of the super delegate as the Party of the few or the Party which defends the dictatorship of the financiers. Secretary Clinton has created massive chaos in Syria, Libya, and previously in Iraq. Just in Syria and Libya she has led to about half million people killed and about 6 million are leaving their homes. She has done this killing for the interest of Israel, not the interest of USA. This is why Israel supporters are defending her and financing her campaign. She has leaked sensitive information to outsiders and she will be indicted. Several legal authorities have reached this conclusion. She is a racist and hate black people and called them predators. She hates Muslim people and tries to use them for her fight to expand the state of Israel. She is for the financiers and the continuation of their looting of American wealth. People are losing their homes and pension because of her support to this exploitive class. She plans to continue President Obama’s policies that bailout the financiers with trillions of dollars and cut social programs, policies that have helped insurance companies and shipped American jobs to foreign countries through trade deals that have created class war against workers. She is one of the basic reason behind the massive inequality and high poverty in the USA. Most American people think of her as dishonest with changing positions. These are just few reasons why she will lose the election if she gets nominated by the representatives of the financiers. Senator Sanders is a man of integrity and he is better than her for the USA.

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  • May 11, 2016 at 12:27 pm
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    Hark hark, just when Hillary is losing two states in a row and Bernie has a good chance of winning in the next two states that vote next week, this shill of an author is publishing this piece of false propaganda for Hillary, trying with all means to vilify Bernie.

    Bernie never denied that him winning the nomination is an uphill battle. He certainly should try to the very end. That is his right as candidate. Hillary hasn’t won the nomination yet. What Bernie said is that if he gets closer to winning the required number of delegates that super delegates would likely change their support. That is what happened during the Obama election. And it would only be fair if it happened now, were Bernie to win enough delegates.

    Hillary apparently doesn’t have the time to campaign against Bernie anymore, preferring to take on Trump, so the readers of Eurasia Review get treated to this piece of vilification of Bernie. Unfortunately, even if Hillary wins, she is likely to lose the general election to Trump. Hillary has just too many skeletons in her closet and Bill cannot help her too much with that.

    As to the unfairness of the primaries – they are pretty clear: a large number of elections were closed primaries, meaning only registered democrats could vote. That excludes 44% of voters who are independents and largely supporters of Bernie. As to the super delegates – they don’t exist to keep out “dangerous” choices. The public would sense when a candidate is an usurper. The super delegates exist for the party to control and make sure that only party insiders get elected i.e. pure incest insurance.

    It is sad that analysts as the author of this piece accept payment for such false information on behalf of one of the candidates. For most of us, Hillary is a war criminal and rightfully belongs in the Hague, not in the White House. Unfortunately, that is true for just about all American presidents: they are all war criminals. But Hillary talking about humaneness and love after she caused a tenfold increase of deaths in and total destruction of Libya with her policies, and precipitating the Libyan people into abject poverty and destitution – not even elementary services like schools and medical care are available in Libya now after it was the most prosperous country in Africa under Qaddafi – is just downright hypocrisy. Hillary was the first to howl Assad has to go and was ready to bomb Syria into rubble. Didn’t she learn anything from the atrocity of the Iraq war and the complete and utter failure of her policies in Libya? Apparently not. And such a person just isn’t fit to be president – for the sake of the world and for the sake of America.

    Reply
  • May 11, 2016 at 10:06 pm
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    The comments here are tremendously better, both in terms of content and factual evidence, than the op-ed itself.

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  • May 11, 2016 at 11:03 pm
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    The beauty of all of this is that it will only help Trump to win the Presidency. A large part of Sanders supporters can’t stand the idea of a corrupt and incompetent woman reaching the helm. They will punish her by voting for Trump

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  • May 12, 2016 at 5:27 am
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    This article seems to be “conservative” propaganda.

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  • May 12, 2016 at 6:28 am
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    Alex, they should vote for Trump. He is way less dangerous than Hillary largely because he has a good foreign policy program. Inland, nobody could possibly doubt that he can get the infrastructure rebuilt – that is his field. And nobody can doubt that he did create a lot of jobs with his RE business. He isa good businessman. In that respect, his characterization of Elisabeth Warren as Goofy is quite to the point. Warren was the dean of the Harvard law school before she joined politics. While that is certainly a responsible and very good job, it is not dependent on competition, pricing, not losing your shirt if circumstances change or, simply put: taking risk. For her to criticize Trump because he ended up on Chapter 11 a couple of times is at best ignorant of both, reality and law. Chapter 11 is written the way it is to give companies a chance to forestall paying creditors to try and restructure internally to get back into black numbers. If they do, they will then pay their former creditors. If they can’t, if would lead to bankruptcy. That means a probate court would appoint a receiver under whose supervision hard assets are auctioned off to pay creditors. To my knowledge, Trump never got that far down the hill. What is to say is that he always picked up the pieces, looked at why things failed and got back up with new ventures: he never gave up. All of that, the good and the bad is within the law and makes for a vastly much better president than Hillary could ever be with her endless moralism, play acting a role and her absurd advisors like Kissinger, Albright and Breszinsky – all absurd war mongers and just downright fascists. Kissinger advised to bomb a dam in Vietnam. The president asked if it would kill people. Kissinger replied: about 200’000. The dam was bombed. I think that says everything about Kissinger and is enough that he should be in jail, not decorated with some obscure service award by Obama to cover up Hillary after Bernie pointed out the evil nature of Kissinger.

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