Bernie ran as a Democrat because that was the only way that he could get traction in our broken political system. However, he's admitted multiple times that he did much better than he ever thought that he would. I think that is the key thing to consider here. When he started his campaign, he didn't plan to win. His goal was to push Hillary to the left and talk about issues that were being ignored by her right leaning neoliberal platform.

When he started to gain traction months before Iowa and he was beginning to look like he could be a strong contender for the nomination, he campaigned even harder against her (the establishment), forgetting his original goal. In doing so, I think that he unintentionally highlighted the ugliness of her campaign and showed how she was running on a record that is antithetical to progressive ideas. It's not that Bernie necessarily intended to expose these things to us. It's that they were made manifest because that's who the Clintons are. They don't know how to run a clean campaign.

After NY and California, when it was clear that he was cheated out of the nomination and had no chance to win, he was stuck. He had essentially run his entire campaign against Hillary. It was no longer about simply pushing her to the left as originally intended. The problem is that from the beginning, Bernie said that he didn't want to be a spoiler. To him, that means that the two-party system cannot be challenged by an underdog this late in the game, no matter what the level of discontent, and that he, as the loser, would have to back the winner in the general election. Personally, I think he's wrong, but that's likely what he believes. He was faced with the choice of either being the spoiler that he said he would never be or throwing his full support behind a politician that was his complete opposite. There were no good options, and he chose what he saw as the more productive path, where he could at least extract some concessions.

I don't think it was brilliance per se, but rather just the way that things turned out. While I don't think that he was as firm in his convictions as he should have been, I don't consider him a sellout. Again, I think that much of what he managed to do was largely unintentional, and that it really developed organically as a result of not just the process but the hard work and dedication that those of us that support him put into the primaries. If we hadn't supported Bernie as strongly as we did, we never would have seen the depths to which the DNC and the Clinton camp had rigged the process. As he said, it wasn't him, it was us.

Remember When Reporters Said Hillary Was Winning ‘Fair And Square,’ Because Sanders’ Supporters Will

For months, though Bernie Sanders’ supporters were saying that the DNC nominating process was rigged, reporters and pundits asserted that Hillary Clinton was winning or had already won “fair and square.” She didn’t, though. By now, the general public knows that the process was rigged in Hillary’s favor. More than just superdelegates (who cast their votes at the actual National Convention and not before) stacking the deck from the beginning, the DNC showed favoritism towards Hillary Clinton, according to the emails released in the WikiLeaks dump just days before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Do you remember when Daily Koz [sic] wrote that Bernie Sanders was closing out the primary season in a “cloud of whining, conspiracy mongering, and blame casting” and that Hillary Clinton won fair and square? Sanders’ supporters remember, and they are leaving the Democratic party.

I loved it that Markos gets called out in the second paragraph.

All of those articles claiming that Hillary Clinton won fair and square might have been awfully fun to share by people hoping to belittle Sanders’ staunchest supporters. They probably even made for an easy day’s work on the part of the people being paid by Correct The Record to get online and make it look as though Hillary Clinton had stronger social media support than actually existed.

Yet, even now, Hillary Clinton’s establishment Democrats claim she won fair and square, as if rigging a system is fair and square.

Remember these continued insults in the coming months. Remember all of the times Sanders’ supporters were mocked, shamed and told that Hillary Clinton won fair and square, because those words are “berned” into Sanders’ supporters memories.

Sanders’ supporters are leaving the Democratic party. Elizabeth Warren couldn’t stop them. President Obama couldn’t stop them. Vice President Biden couldn’t stop them. Not even Sanders can stop them.

Fittingly, the DNC has only themselves and the media they tried to puppeteer to blame.

The first quoted section is the intro, the second quoted section is the conclusion, but there’s a helluva lot more in between.

who "elected" to sacrifice several years of his life to exposing the totally corrupt Duopoly that essentially runs the Western world just now (the "1-Percent" and the "We Sort-of Are Opposed to the 1-Percent [Although We Take Their Money]").

Hope Bernie can go on to a long, relaxing post-politico life with the grandies --