What Does Bernie Want?

Turns out that being the establishment candidate grates against the growing number of voters who realize the establishment has failed them. The big money backing Clinton had its costs when voters think our politics are corrupted. Her experience has liabilities, as she moved to disavow the policies her husband and she championed from trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP, to harsh and biased criminal sentencing measures, to banking deregulation and more. She is burdened by scandals, old and new, some self-inflicted, even if inflated by right-wing hit squads.

Worse, she chose to run as the candidate of continuity when voters are looking for change. She made herself the champion of incremental reforms when voters -- particularly young voters -- yearn for much more. She purposefully presented herself as more hawkish than Obama-- an "interventionist" Joe Biden called her -- at a time when voters are weary of endless wars without victory.

The result is she's almost as unpopular as Trump is -- and recent polls show him closing the margins between them.

That's the cause of the hysteria. Clinton understandably doesn't want to risk the embarrassment of losing to Sanders in California. The superdelegates are aghast that they might face pressure from Sanders supporters to vote for him. Their votes are supposed to be locked up in backroom deals. They aren't accustomed to being held accountable for them, or to facing public pressure -- phone calls, letters, demonstrations, and aggravations -- on how they vote. But they set the rules. They could have gone to the convention as observers, but they wanted a vote. Putting themselves in the kitchen, they now complain about the heat.

The Democrats' Dilemma

Donald Trump is utterly unfit to be president. He is a classic American bounder, a version of Melville's confidence man, peddling scams, preying on hate and division, posturing with bluster and bunk, insult and idiocy. He's utterly incapable of carrying a policy argument, adopting and shedding positions at will.

He's blown apart the Republican Party, repelling its neo-conservative hawks, its establishment bankrollers, its suburbanite moderates, and its social conservative zealots. His sexism repulses women; his peddling of hate and racial division will mobilize people of color against him. His social conservatism and climate denial alienate millennials. His candidacy could well set the stage for a sea-change election, with sweeping Democratic victories up and down the ticket.

But Trump clearly has a genius for playing our media, particularly the increasingly abject cable news channels. He understands "branding," and has brutally labeled each of his opponents. He's wily as a fox in the supposed irresponsibility of his insults.

And unless the party's establishment responds to Sanders, Democrats are likely to end up [with] a candidate particularly vulnerable to Trump's assault. For all of the Clinton campaign complaints, Sanders has been the courtliest of opponents. Trump has already shown he'll have no such compunctions. And sadly, the Clintons provide numerous targets of opportunity, old and new. Along with raking through the scandals, Trump will paint Clinton as Obama's third term, while indicting her interventionist foreign policy, her support of corporate trade deals, and her funding ties with Wall Street.

Americans are not likely to elect Donald Trump president of the United States, but the Democrats are about to present the nomination to one of the few candidates that could make the race close. For this, Sanders is not to blame. And if Clinton is the nominee, she'll have more than enough time to frame her argument against Trump and to organize the broadest coalition against him.

Democratic Unity

To win a convincing victory and gain a mandate for change, Clinton would benefit greatly from the energy and passion of Sanders and his supporters. The campaign clearly believes it might gather in moderate, suburban Republicans, the professional class repulsed by Trump's hate mongering and by his transparent lack of temperament or qualification to be president. The campaign may well decide that Trump will organize the Sanders voters for her. That would be a mistake. Young voters and Democratic leaning independents aren't going to vote for Donald Trump, but they could easily stay home in large numbers.

No one likes a sore loser. But one of the hardest challenges in politics is to be a generous winner. If Clinton believes as she says that she will be the nominee, she should run hard to win California, while curbing the attack dogs, shutting down the attacks on Sanders' character or his supporters' intelligence. She should warn the superdelegates they'll have to take the heat, even as she seeks to consolidate their support. She should begin paving the way for unity. Sensible first steps would be getting the poisonous Debbie Wasserman Schultz out of the way, and opening up the platform and rules committees to Sanders nominees. After California, she should reach out to Sanders directly.

And she would be wise to embrace not only the Sanders energy, but to move to adopt many of his themes, and champion some of his major reforms. Sanders will no doubt endorse, if he loses the nomination. But how his followers respond -- the energy and enthusiasm they bring to the general election -- will be far more dependent on what Clinton does and how she runs than on his endorsement.