Sanders Supporters Change the Game

It's too late for Bernie to get on the ballot as an Independent. (Although I'm guessing he wouldn't even want to.)  Here's an interesting poll:


(Jacobin article here.)

There's an interesting interview with Bernie done just after he ceded the nomination to Hillary, but only published now. Reading it, I wonder what some of his answers would be now that the Hillary/Podesta emails have come out. Eg:

From Bernie's interview:

On a number of issues, I believe Hillary Clinton’s positions are quite strong. I was happy to negotiate an agreement with her in the party’s platform which said that she would support making public colleges and universities tuition-free for families making $125,000 or less. That is pretty revolutionary. That will not only transform the ability of people to go to college, it will have an impact on kids in elementary school today who know that if they study hard, they can get a college education. She and I also agreed to a doubling of the expansion of community health centers. That’s tens of millions more people who will have access to primary health care and dental care and low-cost prescription drugs and mental health counseling. I want to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and I think Clinton is open to moving in that direction, to at least $12 an hour. She supports infrastructure projects that will put millions of people back to work.

  Bernie @ New Republic

Yeah, that was before this leaked out:

How does Bernie feel now?

I still think Bernie always intended to run his campaign in order to bring more leftists to the polls, assuming he would turn them to Hillary in the general election.  It wasn't quite that easy. He's still begging them.

Elizabeth Warren has been busy behind the scenes of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, collecting a “vetted” list of potential candidates for presidential appointments, in the hopes that Clinton will give progressives significant sway over her hiring decisions.

Sanders told Face the Nation on Sunday that he’s already involved with Warren’s program, specifically to keep “Wall Street” from having influence on the next President.

  Heat St.

Fat chance, you two. Unless you can prove you can cause Hillary some real trouble, we've already seen how the Clinton team deals.

And how about "Bernie people"? How do they feel now?

The [progressive] operation, known online as #OpDeny270, is a social media driven campaign to ensure Bernie supporters have an opportunity to use their combined political effort to punish the Democratic Party for denying their candidate the nomination.

The theory is that, if more than 20 states voted for Bernie in the primaries, there’s enough of a base of support to turn one state. The goal is to deny Clinton as many states as possible, so that the electoral college comes out a draw and Congress must decide the next President.

  Heat St.

To be fair, Congress would probably decide for Hillary.

So far, the effort is struggling, but #OpDeny27 has Bernie slated for approved write-ins in seven states. Aside from voters in the  [...] target states of Vermont, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington, #OpDeny270 is asking progressives to commit to the Green Party ticket.

Combined with Jill Stein’s ballot access, that gives progressives a significant boost in opportunity to protest Hillary Clinton en masse.

This kind of insurrection is tricky. If progressives target the wrong states, they could end up throwing a safe set of Clinton electoral college votes to Donald Trump. If they fail to secure major blue states, they’ll appear as a weak contingent – an argument against including them in any coalitions going forward.

But if they stick to a handful of achievable states and run a focused, local campaign, they may have more success. With 174 electoral votes still in the “toss up” category, chances increase.

#opdeny270

Add to that the Gary Johnson voters.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.