She'll get caught, but later.

"So, there are enormous issues facing this country. Let me conclude by saying this, and I say this to the media: I have never run a negative ad in my life. I have been in many campaigns, and you ask the people of Vermont, they will tell you, “Bernie Sanders has never run a negative ad. I hate and detest these 30 second ugly negative ads."

I don't disagree with some ofthe analysis here in the diary. However, I think we can twist this every which way to Sunday. Rightly or wrongly, Bernie wanted to win the Presidency by campaigning on a message that exposes our corrupt institutions. I believe he steadfastly stuck to his message as best he could.

We may say that his persistence within the party is part of his charm or his fatal flaw - or both. But let's not over analyze it and try to find some ulterior motive, a subtext, an underlying strategy as yet uncovered. If there is another trick up his sleeve, he'll show it in due course.

I found Bernie's campaign refreshingly brilliant. I have never experienced anything close to it in politics and probably never will again. He brought to us a life time of unimpeachable solid work. He struggled to further that work in the past year. I know, even in apparent defeat, I am better for having participated.

keep his hand in so that if she is indicted by the time of the convention, the nom will become his. I think his hammering on the email issue would look like "sore loserism" after he initially and probably ill-advisedly said that he'd heard enough about the damn emails. I think to win, he still has to flip the supers, and if he is the driver behind email charges being filed, all those Clinton supporters will not flip to him. Not sure what they'd do. Nominate Biden? I guess if neither wins the first voting round, then the delegates are released and yes, they are free not to give it to Bernie, although if they don't they will face a popular uprising. But I think if he plays nice until then, they just might give him the nom if Hillary is indicted meanwhile. So I don't think he's acting in Kabuki, I think he's doing what he can to protect any chance he has remaining.

Of course, I don't think she will be indicted by next week, so it will become a moot point. But I think that's why he's "endorsing". They have also given him a prominent national stage where he can once again make his stump speech, perhaps with another round of "Hillary understands" to try to lock her positions into his positions.

As for rebutting the article: They state Comey appeared before Congress on Thursday, June 7, when it was actually Thursday, July 7. They spell initial inititial. They discuss someone "who overly into computers". They state she might be guilty of "a misdemeanor under ." They make a variety of punctuation errors. Other than that, I can't rebut. [also, you might want to fix your own typo in the tags!]

As for the legal analysis, as I understand it, she asked people to set up a server for her in her home. That is all that's required under "intent". If State IT came to her and said, "We are here to set up a server in your home," and it was not any request of hers, then there might not be intent. But this was all her doing, therefore intent is proven. They point out that this is different from motive, which would be a desire, for example, to allow foreigners to access the information.

Anyway, it was an excellent article! Now if only this would all mean an indictment by next week!

I wish Bernie had blasted Hellery in the early debates when she attacked him on gun control, while she as SoS was arms merchant and chief ... and linked those sales to donations to the foundation. People have a right to know about that...and still do. I suspect it will all come out in the general election shoeing in T-rump. When (if?) the people understand the depth of corruption with the foundation they will drop her like a hot potato. Too bad we can't make that happen this week during the RNC.

I don't think it is negative to educate people about misdeeds - evidently Bernie does.

Will Bernie's endorsement be like Samson's haircut? I hope not.

tired of the "talking class". Don't want to be part of them.

But they didn't leave the horse to threaten him, they threatened us.

People with better access than us indicated she made a deal with him which involved what she would allow into the platform. I'm sure there were other threats involved, but they weren't made against him. They were made against us. He won't be around much longer, he has nothing personal to fear. Whatever bargain was made, was made for our own good.

So if they left a part of horse in someone's bed, I guess it was ours.

I wish that some people here would be aware of how very knee-jerky they get if a commenter gives a well-reasoned critique on Bernie's tactics. Instead of proclaiming that Bernie is true of heart and you trust him completely (implying that the commenter doesn't), or you KNOW that he's just playing chess, or poker, or has a long game plan - just admit that it's impossible to know what Bernie is thinking, or what he intended to do all along, because you just.don't.know. And please stop equating criticism of his tactics with finding fault with his intentions or policies.

Continuing to react this way to people who might disagree with you sets up a siege (us against them) mentality and is the opposite of being welcoming. I dare say, it's a lot like being on TOP.

party nominee from the beginning of his run. Clinton has not won yet.
He promised to fight all the way to the convention. He doesn't even have an active campaign at present.
I am curious to know if anyone here has read the official Democratic Party Platform that existed before the current one was adopted. My guess is that the last time it was mentioned was in 2012, then put away on the shelf to collect dust.
The betrayal I feel is not personal to Bernie, whom I respect more than anybody in government office.
It is the system that has cheated me out of hope. He is now officially endorsing it.

Not so much that he did it, but the way he did it. Robert Scheer's recent essay on Truthdig, Et Tu, Bernie? crystallized my feelings.

What an embarrassment for Bernie Sanders and those, myself included, who thought he would not descend so cravenly into the swamp of political sellout.

It is one thing to hold one’s nose and vote for Hillary Clinton as the lesser evil. It is quite another to suddenly absolve the Clintons and other top Democrats who have, as Sanders repeatedly pointed out during his campaign, contributed so much to the national crisis.

[snip]

...suddenly, the very sentences that he formerly used to attack her now are the basis of his endorsement: “This election is about the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that currently exists, the worst it has been since 1928. Hillary Clinton knows that something is very wrong when the very rich become richer, while many others are working longer hours for lower wages. She knows that it is absurd that middle-class Americans are paying an effective tax rate higher than hedge fund millionaires, and that there are corporations in this country making billions in profit while they pay no federal income tax in a given year because of loopholes their lobbyists created.”

Admittedly, Bernie never did say that he expected Clinton to actually do a damn thing to correct those grotesque levels of income and wealth inequality that she "knows" to be very wrong, especially in light of the inconvenient fact that it was policies and legislation she championed that are in no small part responsible for the terrible situation we're now in. And given her lengthy record of unabashedly favoring the 1 percent, and back-stabbing the 99 percent, at every turn, there is absolutely no reason to believe those policies she "knows" to be wrong will not continue to be a centerpiece of her neoliberal approach to governing.

“I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years,” the new Bernie gushes. “I remember her as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play, as she helped lead the fight for universal health care. I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children.”

"A fierce advocate for the rights of children?" Now that is really rich. Could it be he's referring to the children pushed into extreme poverty when the 1996 welfare reform legislation that HRC so zealously promoted shredded the social safety net? Or perhaps all those whose parents became grist for the prison-industrial complex, courtesy of her husband's 1994 crime bill? Or maybe those refugee kids who were sent back to Central America to face death squads in order to teach them respect for the rule of law? Or how about all those Muslim children in Gaza, the West Bank, Libya, Iraq, and other parts of the Middle East who have been sacrificed, and will be sacrificed in the future, in service of her grandiose dreams of a modern day Roman Empire?

Ironically, it was Clinton herself who made reference to the "putting lipstick on a pig" metaphor, but Bernie was the one who ended up actually applying it. Perhaps there was no way he could have made good on his promise to support the party nominee without sacrificing his dignity and credibility to some extent, but nonetheless it was a painful thing to watch. Eleven-dimensional chess? High stakes poker? Maybe. The fact remains that 99 times out of 100, the simple explanation turns out to be the correct one. Sanders has never shown the least bit of interest in challenging the two-party duopoly - he evidently doesn't believe it's possible. And since he doesn't seem ready to retire from the Senate, he had plenty of incentive to placate the party establishment and his Senate colleagues by enthusiastically hopping aboard the Hillary bandwagon.

Personally, I don't think it's really any more complicated than that. But regardless, his erstwhile supporters now have decision of their own to make. That is, whether to follow Great Leader back into the Democratic Party veal pen, or else begin the process of charting an independent course. Thankfully in two weeks the Dem convention will be history, HRC will almost surely be the "official" party nominee, and all the nonsensical theories about Bernie's diabolical plan to snatch the nomination away from her at last possible moment will mercifully be laid to rest. Sanders has in my view contributed a lot that has been positive and beneficial to the political process in this country, but the time has now come to look past Bernie Sanders the man, and concentrate on how to most effectively continue the struggle he did so much to inspire.