Clinton's numbers have gotten among Bernie Sanders supporters. 60% have an unfavorable view of her. https://t.co/qBPua9pS3a

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 19, 2016

It's like a bell rang in Nate Silver head. His new piece at 538 finally notices the importance of Independents. He also just got wind of the news that Bernie does fantastic with Independent voters and oh my goodness Independents are a majority of the voting electoral! What to do? Well of course make Hillary attractive to Independents! Excuse me while I roll over laughing! Talk about trying to force a square into a circle!

Nate obviously hasn't seen this chart:

Reuters tracking poll filtered for likely general election voters, independents only. Yellow is Sanders (58%). Red is Clinton (14%). Orange is Won't Vote (28%). Won't Vote has double the support that Clinton has.

Hillary is tanking with Independents. There's a reason for that and no amount of superficial lies and pandering can put lipstick on that pig.

That’s because a lot of Sanders voters don’t identify as Democrats. Exit polls have been conducted in 27 primary and caucus states so far, and Clinton has won among voters who identify as Democrats in all but Vermont, New Hampshire and Wisconsin (where she tied Sanders). But she’s won self-identified independents only in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. (I keep using that term “self-identified” because the exit poll asks voters how they “usually think of” themselves — Democrat, Republican or independent. A voter’s self-identification may differ from her party registration, and some states do not have party registration at all.)

[...]

Overall throughout the primaries and caucuses, I estimate, Clinton is beating Sanders by 27 percentage points among self-identified Democrats but losing to Sanders by 31 points among voters who call themselves independents but voted in the Democratic primaries.2 This might be confusing because we usually think of independent voters as being moderate. Sanders voters, however, are definitely to the left of Clinton, but a lot of them don’t like to call themselves Democrats. (Sanders himself, of course, has repeatedly been elected to Congress as an independent and did not officially declare himself to be a Democrat until November.) As a result, about 40 percent of Sanders’s primary and caucus voters identify as independent, as Republican or with some party other than Democrats, according to my estimates.

[...]

If Clinton wins over those voters, she’ll gain a few percentage points on Trump in national and swing state polls, and the race will potentially look more like it did in March and April, with Clinton having a fairly comfortable lead over Trump. If not, the general election could come down to the wire.

Silver is so vested into the Clinton must win narrative that he totally ignores what's right in front of his face: Bernie is the stronger candidate against Trump.

Hillary surrogates have to twist their brains into non coherent pretzels to justify their support.