So, lets game this out for the sake of argument.
What would a Bernie Sanders victory look like? How will it happen? What would be the result?
How will it happen?
To be fair, I don’t think this has any chance of happening, but if it were to happen, pretty much the only way it would at this point is for Sanders to flip most of the Super Delegates at the convention.
This would take an act of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but for the sake of argument, lets say Sanders goes into the convention with 3+ Million less votes and 300+ less pledged delegates, but somehow comes out with the nomination for President.
What would be the result?
Well, for starters, you would have a candidate that lost the primary contest win the nomination. Whereas it is common for the loser’s supporters to be upset and feel like their votes didn’t matter, in this scenario, Clinton’s voters would be able to clearly point to their candidate having won the two primary metrics and still had it taken away.
This is what disenfranchisement really looks like. Having real votes by real people with a real majority end up with a real loss.
Now, lets break this down further. You are talking about telling at least 2/3rds of African American voters in the US that even though as a group they gave Clinton the most votes, the white guy still gets the nomination.
If that caused even half of the Clinton supporting African Americans to not bother to vote at all, you would be talking about a 1/3rd reduction in their voting in many states. To put that in further perspective, this could drop votes for the Democratic Candidate vs the Trump by 6.6% in Virginia, 4.6% in Florida, 4.4% in Michigan, 4% in Ohio, and 3.6% in Pennsylvania,
To put it even more bluntly, disenfranchising African Americans by even 1/3rd would cause the Democratic Party to almost certainly lost Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Conclusion
Disenfranchising our main base of voters is NOT a winning strategy. He lost the popular vote and the delegates in the Democratic Party primary in large part because he couldn’t extend his appeal to African American voters who, quite frankly, are the reason that Democratic Party candidates win so many races across this country.
At this point, there is no world in which Bernie Sanders is able to get the nomination that likely does not result in the Democratic Party losing both the Presidency and massively in down ticket races this November.
So can we please stop talking about crap like how Sanders does better in polls vs Trump so he has a reasonable argument to the super delegates, because this is factually incorrect and ignores what overturning the will of the voters would do to the party for decades to come.
Let’s wrap up this primary season, let everyone have their say, but also lets come together and make it unequivocally clear to Sanders that contesting his loss to the convention is a fools errand and one that we will not accept.