Can Bernie get the Superdelegates to defect from Hillary in 11th hour?

[Dr. Arch]

Of course not.

Infact, the Sanders campaign, which begun as an idealistic campaign based on a positive message has turned into everything it wasn't supposed to be. Vying for superdelegates, going negative on the presumptive democratic nominee, not calling rapid violent supporters to order, it's pretty damn ugly.

This. All this. Sanders' campaign has become incredibly disappointing.

[IceSpear]

So where is Bernie's campaign getting the idea that they can get Hillary's superdelegates? Just because he's a couple points ahead of Trump in the polls?

Or are they just seriously delusional?

They're obviously out of touch with reality.

If he ignored superdelegates at this point he'd be essentially admitting defeat, which would cause many of his supporters not to vote. He wants as many delegates as possible to maximize his influence for platform/process changes at the convention, so he needs to keep up the charade.

If he's still saying it after June 7th, then we know he is delusional and has gone off the deep end. At that point it would be time for Obama/Biden and the rest of the party to bring down the hammer. I doubt it will come to that though.

That's a good point.  It's easy to forget how little of the party apparatus has actually come out for Hillary.  Obama and Biden haven't stayed out of the race because they were too busy going sunglasses shopping.  They wanted to make Bernie's inevitable defeat seem as fair as possible to try to prevent exactly what's happening right now from happening.  In that sense, they really ought to just endorse now and get it over with, since Bernie's doggedly determined to stir up chaos and convince everyone the process was rigged against him regardless of reality.  But if he doesn't have the decency to drop out and endorse Hillary after June 7, we're going to see Obama, Hillary, and Pelosi give Bernie a royal smackdown from on high.

Yeah, very true. Despite all the hype about how the process was "rigged", the reality is that the party has for the most part gone out of its way to be fair to him. Hillary and her surrogates rarely attack him viciously and for the most part use kid gloves, usually complimenting him but quibbling about his voting record or naiveity. Even when his campaign got more negative in the later stages they rarely went after him with the intensity establishment allies of both Clinton and Obama in 08 went after each other. In fact, he has never had a single negative ad run against him. Hardly anybody has called for him to drop out of the race, yet many people in the Democratic establishment were calling for Hillary to drop out in 08 because she was "hurting the party" or whatever. This despite the fact that she arguably won the popular vote and was much closer in delegates than Bernie is. Oh, and two entire states were disenfranchised in 2008 because of muh arbitrary dates, one of which was a strong huge Hillary state and another of which would've been very competitive. Imagine if the DNC disenfranchised, say...Washington and Illinois this year. Then they'd see REAL unfairness.

It's not like the DNC took any measures to strangle the Sanders campaign in its infancy, and despite the protestations of the whiners, plenty of those methods would've been available if they truly wanted to go scorched earth. If they really wanted hardball, they could've done so. For instance, they could've used technicalities to even prevent him from running in the first place due to the fact that he wasn't a registered Democrat. Hillary and her surrogates could've viciously attacked him as a communist, far left fringe candidate, bringing up the rape essays, kind words for foreign dictators, his wife's work at Burlington College, and all the other stuff that was in that Slate article (Bernie is luckily he won't get to the general, Trump will never get the opportunity to destroy his image.) It wasn't hard to see even early on that Bernie would do well in caucuses. The DNC could've had a change of heart and decided they wouldn't reward such undemocratic contests, and either force all states to adopt a primary or risk getting no delegates or their delegates cut in half. Obama and Biden could've put their entire weight into crushing him once he started to look like a threat. Remember the data breach? They could've revoked his access permanently, instead they let him off with a warning. If the Hillary campaign had done something like that, the media would have literally been invoking Watergate.

Really, the only two things where the party was "in the tank" for her was the superdelegates declaring their support for her en masse and the debate schedule. The former which will be irrelevant in the end, and the latter which is actually ironic due to the fact that she performed very well in most of the debates.

[Hermit For Peace]

Thanks for the insight everyone. This thread is fascinating!

[IceSpear]

But if he doesn't have the decency to drop out and endorse Hillary after June 7, we're going to see Obama, Hillary, and Pelosi give Bernie a royal smackdown from on high.

I'm not so sure. They're scared to death of angering the Bernie supporters. And rightfully so. But this is the real wild card. If Bernie really takes the fight to the convention, this election is Trumps for the taking.

What do they have to lose?  June 7th has basically been the final deadline for Bernie to drop out throughout the race.  If he misses it then it means he's basically going to go on for another two months.  Might as well lance the boil early rather than letting him destroy the convention as well.  If Trump gets his 2-3 point convention bounce and Hillary doesn't that will needlessly narrow the race.

Yep. If he actually tries to overturn the result, the party might as well declare war in June, absorb all the negative press and hurt feelings, and attempt to make it an old story by the convention. Letting the narrative fester under the surface for nearly two months only to climax at the convention would be WAY more harmful.

Though there is a lot of ambiguity here. No matter what, he's not releasing his delegates since he's going to want his name to go into roll call and use them to push for changes to the platform and the process. The main thing will be if he concedes and begins to make attempts to unify the party, though it would begin as a gradual process obviously. I'm not sure whether suspending his campaign matters or not, I'd imagine it would depend on how that affects delegate allocation. I'm not sure how it works on the Dem side, but Republican candidates lost some of their delegates upon suspension. It's also possible he doesn't formally concede immediately, but also does not explicitly talk about trying to overturn the result, in which case the party will likely play along since it would be a sign he's mostly going to play nice during the convention lull period and at the convention itself.

[IceSpear]

Not now he can't. The scorched-Earth strategy has f***ed him.

To be fair, they were never going to flip regardless of what his strategy was. The only way he could have gotten them to do so would've been a pledged delegate lead as well as a popular vote win.

[This account no longer in use.]

No, they can't. (sane, normal, etc.)

[Seriously?]

Bernie's camp thinks they can win over Hillary's Superdelegates and name him as the Democratic nominee, stating that he is in the best position to defeat Trump.

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http://www.npr.org/2016/05/19/478705022/sanders-campaign-now-says-superdelegates-are-key-to-winning-nomination

Do you think the Superdelegates will take another look at the Sander's campaign and go for him over Hillary?

Only if she's indicted, which is very unlikely. The Democrats would have a civil war on their hands if they tried to slide Biden in at the last minute in that scenario.

[DrScholl]

Considering that they have never done gone against the pledged delegate lead before there is no chance of them doing that now. Even if they did (and I'm not talking about in the scenario of an indictment or Clinton being ill), Sanders wouldn't have a chance in the general. A lot of Clinton supporters would sit out under those circumstances.

[Likely Voter]

I kind of think Bernie is bluffing. Once CLinton is declared the presumptive nominee by the networks she will get official endorsements from Obama and Biden and probably Warren. If he hasnt conceded after DC it will just start looking desperate, especially as by that time I assume 500+ supers will have reaffirmed their commitment to CLinton to the press and/or via official statements.   But for now Sanders needs to say he can still win to justify staying in the race, and saying he can win a majority of pledged (something he was saying up until the last primaries in April) is no longer believable.

[Hermit For Peace]

Gotta give Bernie credit for being a fighter to the bitter end.