The cosmic question Democrats of all stripes are asking today is whether by tonight we’ll know whether Bernie plans to stay in the race until the convention. He may have answered that question at his rally last night in Los Angeles. It may depend on how he decides to define one word.
"If we can win, and win big here in California and in the other states, and in Washington D.C., we are going to go into the Democratic convention with enormous momentum. With your help, I believe, we will come out with the nomination."
The word of course is:
Big
He added a second crucial contingency for staying in the race besides winning big today, super-delates changing their minds.
He says that the delegates currently saying they will vote for Hillary will change their minds based on believing he is more electable than she is.
In 1984 Gary Hart said the same thing when he ran against Walter Mondale. When the convention came along, Mondale got all of the super-delegates. Of course Mondale lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan running for his second term.
Still, he wasn't running against a candidate who was mentally unbalanced, and about whom it could fairly be argued was the the Devil incarnate. Love him or hate what he had done to, or for, the country after three years, he hadn’t turned the landscape into a flaming cauldron of hellfire. Nobody ever called Reagan a narcissistic demagogue.
I want to believe that if Bernie doesn’t win by a margin that reasonably can be called “big” he will gracefully withdraw and enthusiastically support Hillary. There’s no sense predicting the election results beyond what we all know, i.e., that polls and pundits are agreeing the margins will be close. A “big” win by any definition isn’t likely. We’ll know tonight.
If Bernie doesn’t win big, that leaves only one rational reason for him to continue running. That would mean his taking back what he said about winning big, and pinning his nomination on the votes from super-delegates, the majority of whom have told the A.P. they will vote for Hillary.
If Bernie only squeaks past Hillary today, and especially if he looses, and keeps his “sort of” promise to take the race to the convention, I have to wonder about whether his reasons fall somewhere on continuum between what he really think is best for the country, and what’s best for Bernie personally. I don’t want to “go there” in my next diary…. it won’t be pretty.
