People love narratives. And the media love narratives. So lets compare two possible narratives going into the next Dem primary (either 2020 if HRC loses to Trump or 2024 if she becomes the president (keep in mind that these are political narratives, they are not necessarily true)

Narrative 1:

Bernie drops out of the race today after failing to win Arizona and gives an impassioned speech imploring his followers to vote for HRC in the primaries moving forward. Given HRC’s current lead in elected delegates of 58% to 42%, we could realistically expect her to further expand that margin in the back half of the primary to maybe 25% of elected delegates, throw in the superdelegates (15% of total delegates) and she ends up winning the nomination by about 40%.

In this scenario, the establishment will have the narrative that a progressive candidate is simply not viable in the next primary. And they will be able to point to the 40 pt blowout that Bernie suffered at the hands of HRC as evidence for why this narrative is self-evident. And sadly, a great many people will believe the narrative simply because they believe the authority figures that tell it. In a similar way that Bernie has been crushed by the false narrative that he is “radical” when his positions are right smack dab in the center of the 1960’s\70’s Dem party platform (his policy positions are also supported by majorities when looking at the polling on Medicare for all, raising taxes on .1%, eliminating student debt servitude, reigning in Wall st, and investing in infrastructure). He’s also been hurt by the false narrative that HRC is more electable when no objective measures support that story. But again, truth is not the purpose of political narratives, politics is the purpose. So even though the narrative of progressive Dem candidates not being credible would be objectively false, the story would be easy to tell, and easy to believe if HRC wins the nomination by 40 pts. And this is exactly the story that Corporate Dem establishment would like to tell.

Now narrative 2:

Bernie stays in the race, fighting tooth and nail all the way til the convention and ends up losing the elected delegate count by 5%, throw in a more split superdelegate count (maybe 80-20) and HRC would end up winning the nomination by just 15%. In this scenario, the narrative would favor our progressive side and it would go a little something like this… HRC was the most well known Dem candidate in decades, had the most universal support of the establishment of any recent Dem candidate, had the largest and best funded organization of any Dem primary candidate. And even with all those hugely powerful elements in her corner, she still only managed to beat by 5 pts a largely unknown, self described socialist, old white Jew from uber-liberal snowy white Vermont.

In my mind, the political narrative possibilities of the two above scenarios are extremely powerful and important moving forward. And scenario 2 would be just as extremely unwelcome by the corporate Dem shills that support the status quo and HRC, as it would be a boon to progressives moving forward. And I think this is the primary reason why TPTB want Bernie to drop out of the race right now, its in their best interest interest.