I was about to ponder Donald Trump's astonishing foreign-policy interview with the NY Times, in which he re-evinces a childlike grasp of the world (which, by now, I suppose, shouldn't really astonish anyone). But coming on the heels of Bernie Sanders' astonishing victories yesterday in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii, I thought a focus on Trump might seem like sour grapes. And we wouldn't want that. There is, the Sanders camp would say, plenty of time for us to ponder Trump's above-the-fold foolishness, but their man's brilliant triumphs — and they were brilliant — should be acknowledged straightaway.
That Sanders won in the West wasn't astonishing, of course. It was the magnitude of his wins that "rocked," if that's still the slang. These were no mere battlefield victories; they were massacres: 82 percent in Alaska, 73 percent in Washington, and, so far, 71 percent in Hawaii. Sanders' idealistic hold on the young and the restless is virtually complete.
That, for the Sanders camp, is the good news. The bad news is the delegate balance sheet, which, according to the Associated Press, now stands at Hillary's 1,712, while Bernie possesses 1,004. That's what we might call a continental chasm that simply can't be bridged.
Nevertheless, credit to Sanders for his astonishing, delegate-narrowing wins yesterday. However in keeping with the above good news-bad news theme, there is discredit to Sanders in what the Huffington Post reported Thursday, following his Wednesday interview by "the progressive Web show 'The Young Turks.'" In it, Bernie conditioned his future support for "his" party's presumptive nominee. Well, well, he asked rather threateningly, what is the "Democratic establishment" going to do for us in return for our support for Hillary?
His conditions included a "progressive" 50-state strategy, which makes as much strategic sense as Trump locating his campaign HQ in San Francisco. Reports HuffPost: "Sanders also listed policy demands he would make of Clinton, including a single-payer health care system, a $15 an hour minimum wage, tougher regulation of the finance industry, closing corporate tax loopholes and 'a vigorous effort to address climate change.'"
Most of Sanders' demands Clinton already embraces, but others are discomfiting extensions of Sanders' idiosyncratic campaign. In other words, Sanders will support Clinton only if Clinton agrees to act as a surrogate for Sanders — only if Hillary leases her campaign to Bernie — only if the Democratic Party's nominee bows in both word and deed to the party's nomination loser.
If Sanders was only trying to impress Cenk Uygur's hyperprogressive viewing audience, that's one thing. But if Sanders was sincere — if he genuinely intends to withhold his support of Clinton in the absence of a Sanders-infused general-election campaign — then the Democratic Party blows up in the hands of a de-facto Ralph Nader.
Sen. Sanders may yet morph from mere nuisance to enormous threat.
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