2016 Postmortem

He accomplished his goal of pushing progressive issues into the forefront, and for that he and his supporters should be proud. I think if you are honest with yourself, you will see that he does not represent "half of the party" but that he was able to bring in people who are not Democrats. This is clearly great, if those people remain engaged and work for liberal causes. However, given Sanders' rhetoric, it will be almost impossible to bring many of his supporters into the Democratic fold.

I will concede that most Dems thought it would be an easier primary in terms of money and time spent by the candidate. Most Hillary supporters were never really worried that she would lose, the concern was over the divisions being caused within the party. I attended a fundraising breakfast yesterday with one of Hillary's senior advisors, and they have firm plans to keep her in the spotlight, no matter what happens in CA. It started with the foreign policy speech yesterday, which pretty much put the primary behind everyone who is watching. Then, if she wins CA, it is expected that Sanders will leave the race, either voluntarily or for all practical purposes because he will lose all media coverage. If she loses, she still will have been declared the presumptive nominee and she has all the Democratic Party 'big wigs' ready for a series of press conferences to endorse her. This will dominate the MSM for the remainder of the week, and it will be difficult for someone who lost the primary (even if he won the biggest state) to make any real impact. Remember that Hillary won CA in 2008, so you can expect to hear about how she handled that loss and worked tirelessly to make sure that her supporters voted for Obama in November.