In the aftermath of the sweep last Tuesday, there has been some talk this week in the mainstream media that Bernie Sanders supporters should stand down and now rally behind Clinton. This is the world's worst possible idea, and would hurt Clinton most of all.

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A couple days ago we promised a major strategy piece about how to proceed going forward in this presidential election season. And this will be of relevance and interest to supporters of both Bernie and Hillary.

Whether you support Sanders, or whether you support Clinton, we continue to give away free bumper stickers for your choice, just click on the free sticker link at the bottom right. If your candidate does not prevail, and you did not request one of these free stickers, we'll be giving away free mirrors after the election so you can see who was to blame.

Your choice bumper stickers: http://www.peaceteam.net/your_choice.php

OK, but before we jump into our main message, let's turn our crystal ball again to the other side.

As you know, we were the first to predict that Trump would end up as the Republican nominee, at a time when every other political pundit thought he was some kind of joke. And notwithstanding the fact that the entire Republican establishment has now turned against Trump, and for good reason considering his evasive position on white supremacy and his incitements of his supporters to violence, he remains the strong favorite.

Once Trump has the Republican nomination mathematically sewn up he will insincerely explain away the deliberately ambiguous, though no less offensive, statements he made to win that nomination. And his dummy supporters will buy that as well.

We further NOW PREDICT that he will select Cruz as his running mate, the candidate who has drawn the largest Republican voter turnout other than himself, who will help neutralize his offense of the Latinos problem, and who shares his outsider credentials. Cruz faults Trump now for his low blow attacking fellow Republicans, but once Trump points his garbage shooter exclusively at Democrats, Cruz will live with it just fine.

If you listen carefully to Cruz, his complaints against Trump are mostly that Trump is not a "true" conservative. What better way to cure that for the general election than by giving Cruz the VP slot? And Cruz will accept. When Cruz says he has "zero interest" in being VP, he's just trying to preserve his credibility as top slot nominee himself.

This will lock in the support of the Republican establishment also, who are deperately declaring their support for Cruz, even as they are frantically holding their noses to do even that, in a vain attempt to stop Trump himself. With "their" guy on the ticket as well, how can they object?

In short, all voters who support either Trump or Cruz will turn out in the general election for the Republicans, and that's a LOT of voters, if the primary turnouts are any indication.

With that as a backdrop, and against such a combination on the other side, we tell you now that there is NO ticket on the Democratic side than can prevail in November that does not include BOTH Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

In the aftermath of the sweep last Tuesday, there has been some talk this week in the mainstream media that Bernie Sanders supporters should stand down and now rally behind Clinton. This is the world's worst possible idea, and would hurt Clinton most of all.

Bernie supporters are principle voters. They cannot just be palmed off to another candidate. Worthless gestures like lip service additions to a campaign platform never meant to be honored will not cut it. Vague promises to give him some distant peripheral position will not cut it. If Bernie himself were to accept such a thing his supporters would accuse him of being a sell out and reject the suggestion categorically.

Bernie supporters, at least in some substantial part, will accept NOBODY but Bernie. And the same thing is true about large numbers of Clinton voters.

This leads us to the inescapable conclusion that the only resolution that will keep fatal contingents of the other camp from sitting home on election day is for the one to pick the other as their VP candidate, a true unity ticket. Sanders pulls younger voters and independents. Clinton pulls older voters and more traditional Democrats. One simply cannot win without the other.

In no way are we conceding even now how the Democratic presidential nomination race will turn out.

THAT IS UP TO YOU, BY WHAT YOU DO NOW TO SUPPORT THE CANDIDATE YOU LIKE BEST.

Oh yeah, here is that free bumper sticker link again.

Your choice bumper stickers: http://www.peaceteam.net/your_choice.php

Clinton currently has a substantial lead in the delegate count, even excluding the so-called superdelegates. If you are a Bernie supporter, you need to do everything you can to rally people to vote for him to give him the strongest possible hand at the convention.

And if it happens that Clinton still prevails for the top slot, we must demand, at a MINIMUM, the VP slot. For her part, Clinton has way too many negatives (though not as high as Trump). But they can be ameliorated by having Sanders, the candidate with the highest positives, on board for real, and not just in a token endorsement way.

Having Bernie at least as the VP means having having someone on the inside in the oval office itself to press for our agenda. As VP, you better believe that Bernie would use the office as a bully pulpit like no other before him in history. He would be in a position to keep Clinton honest so to speak, to ride shotgun on the administration. And he would pretty much do just what he would do if he were president himself, continue to effectively rally his supporters to demand real, meaningful progressive policy change.

Moreover, Clinton has bent over backwards to emulate Bernie's positions on just about everything to try to win this nomination. What argument could be made that he is not a good ideological fit, short of the most cynical hypocrisy?

Even if Clinton ends up on top in the end, having Bernie continuing to hold her feet to the fire in state after state will prepare her best for the onslaught of the general election. Any counter argument she does not have live fire to prepare under now may result in unforced stumbles later. Her own speech-making has improved dramatically in response to his challenge. Having Bernie just surrender, which he would never do in a million years, in fact would hurt Clinton.

And on top of everything else, the continued presence of Bernie in the race for the nomination will continue to drive turnout and build it for the general election. The base is being mobilized in this process. Ongoing debates means more free TV coverage to beat up on the Republican front runner. And any premature white flag waving would short circuit this dynamic.

We who support Sanders will continue to support him till the very end.

And if he is not the presidential nominee himself, WE DEMAND the vice presidential nomination as the price of our support in November.

(Article changed on March 20, 2016 at 13:38)

Authors Bio:

The Pen is a real person, and the creator of UTalk, a revolutionary new internet radio interface, to make advocacy messages as facile and easy as possible. With this goal in mind we pioneered one click action pages in the political realm, now imitated by virtually all other action sites on the internet.

The premise behind the resource has always been twofold. If people are speaking out to their members of Congress in sufficient numbers one of two things MUST happen. 1) Either our representatives will heed the voices of their constituents and we will have the policy change we want, or 2) People will personally experience being ignored by their members of Congress, and then we have a base of people motivated to seek their replacement.

Last year we also added to its resource options fax sending capability, so that messages can be sent by fax to recipients who might not be reachable by web input form or regular email.

Besides our own action alerts and pages, many other activist groups have been set up with their own action page creators, including building this capability into the writer article submission interface for OpEdNews itself, to empower them in their own policy missions. And all of these services are provided for absolutely no charge to anyone, supported only by whatever kind donations individuals choose to make from time to time.