Trump and the GOP continue to make useful idiots of the Sanders children

[IceSpear]

His endorsement really won't matter much at this rate. The sane ones have already gradually been migrating to the Hillary camp over the past few weeks. That leaves mostly only the deranged Hillary haters left who prioritize hating her far more than supporting Bernie (the Reddit types), who are already solid Trump/Stein voters. He couldn't convince the latter group even if he was the ticket and spent the next 4 months tirelessly working for Hillary. Hell, these people hate Hillary so much, they probably wouldn't even vote for Sanders if Hillary was HIS VP choice.

[IceSpear]

I think Sanders has made a political miscalculation, at least if he hoped to increase his influence with a future Democratic Administration.  He should have endorsed Clinton weeks ago if that was the case.  Instead he spent the time dithering and Elizabeth Warren stepped into the breach.  Since she and Sanders occupy a similar space ideologically and she has such a high media profile, Clinton has turned to her.  The credit for unifying the base should have been Sanders and now it will likely go to Warren instead.  And whether Warren gets chosen as the running mate or not, she will reap the political benefits of this. 

Yeah, Warren as well as Obama. He had maximum leverage on June 7th and it's been gradually declining ever since. He should've started cutting deals immediately.

Of course, Hillary and the Dems aren't going to completely give him the finger since they want him to play nice at the convention and there's nothing to be gained from antagonizing him and his voters, but he's going to get a lot less than he could've gotten had he played his hand better. But then again, that basically perfectly fits his style during his entire political career, so I guess it's only fitting that's the way he goes out too.

[IceSpear]

Really, Steve? Claiming that Trump's trying to steal away the Sanders supporters because he said 'rigged system'? Even by your standards, this is ridiculous and inane.

Episode XLVII would be the editorial Karl Rove wrote in WSJ today concern trolling Hillary and cheering on Sanders' disruptive moves.

Episode XLVI would be the leak of the GOP internal memo on Hillary's VP choices where they plan to make the narrative about some of them that they're not left wing enough(!) and represent her betraying the Sanders voters.

I could go on.  It's pretty clear that taking advantage of Sanders' gleeful, reckless poisoning of the well is a core part of the GOP strategy at this point.

Do you really think Sanders could convince people like jfern or the Redditors? He has no power over them. They supported him because they hated Hillary Clinton. That's it. He cultivated these voters by necessity, because that's how politics works and he wanted all the support he could get. So I can't begrudge him for that. After all, Hillary had some very unsavory types supporting her in 08 for erm...unsatisfactory reasons. That's how the game is played.