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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why you got downvoted (probably for admitting you support Cruz) but you're entirely correct. As a Bernie supporter, I will be seriously pissed -- not to mention disillusioned and discouraged from supporting the Democrats in the future -- if Hillary wins the nomination despite losing the popular vote.

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Sanders is under no obligation to run as a Democrat in the same way the Democratic Party is under no obligation to change protocol or devote resources to a candidate that is not a member of their party. The Super delegate system has been in place for decades. In light of this information, the Sanders-side cry of foul rings especially hollow.

While true, if Sanders decides to run as an Independent, Republicans would win the election. This has happened before recently, with Nader. So it is in the Democratic party's best interest to support Sanders if he wins the popular vote. I suspect the superdelegates know this, too.

Sanders deciding to sabotage the election of a left-leaning President would completely undermine his stated intentions for the office. Sanders needs the Democratic Party and its infrastructure. The Democratic Party does not need Sanders and has no reason to fear him.

Unless Trump also goes independent. A Sanders vs. Clinton vs. Cruz/Rubio/whoever vs. Trump general election would be... interesting.

I don't think it would go well, because if none of the candidates reach a majority the decision goes to the house.

You have to realize that superdelegates are meant specifically to create a buffer between the popular vote and who becomes nominated. The party is interested in nominating someone who can win, while primary voters may not have such a calculus in mind. It is perfectly reasonable for them to have this insulation.

I'm highly skeptical that matters this time around. The Republican candidates are so bad that this would practically be a free ride for Sanders. Can you imagine Sanders losing to Trump, if Trump gets the Repub. nomination? Losing to Cruz? If he runs against Kasich, or even Rubio, he might have a problem, but against the rest it's practically a free win for whomever the Dems want to nominate.

Sanders does excellently with independent voters, Trump does terribly outside of his 35% subset of committed Republicans. This is possibly the single best chance to get a guy like Sanders into the presidency that will happen for a long, long time. If the party does override a popular vote for Sanders, I think it will almost certainly be to protect the interests of donors to incumbent Democrats, many of whom will be superdelegates, rather than any honest concern about "electability."

Can you imagine Sanders losing to Trump, if Trump gets the Repub. nomination?

I'd put that at about even money.

Losing to Cruz?

Absolutely yes. If you're a typical HN reader, you're in a filter bubble where "democratic socialism" sounds way better than it does to the average American.

I do agree that the Democratic establishment is blatantly in the tank for Clinton, who isn't particularly electable herself.

Sanders is currently beating Trump 49.7% to 40% in polls.[1] Admittedly it is a long way to November, but with all the stuff Trump has said and done, the campaign against him practically writes itself. He has his own party calling him a liberal democrat while there's an endless number of clips of his incessantly racist, sexist, jingoist comments, on top of zero experience in government and four past bankruptcies. Cruz I'm less sure about (Sanders still has 3% lead, and 5.3% over Bush, -1% to Rubio), but I'll gladly take that even money bet if it ends up being Trump vs. Sanders. :)

A far worse scenario is that it ends up being Sanders vs. Trump vs. Bloomberg, Bloomberg siphons disproportionately more votes away from Sanders, and we do end up with a President Trump - plus Republicans retain control of Congress and Trump gets to appoint the next SCOTUS justice. A Trump presidency with control of all three branches of government would be scary indeed.

[1] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/ge...

I really wish people would quit with the "Trump scary" thing. Lots of people agree with a lot of what he says. He isn't manifestly wrong on everything. Because you have a different opinion doesn't make it a fact and it is becoming paraded around like one.

The scary parts, for me, are when he talks about things like Mexico "sending their rapists here," climate change being "invented by the Chinese to hurt US manufacturing," wanting to bring back torture and do "a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding," feeds the birther movement by claiming that Obama isn't a US citizen, responds to religious extremism by saying "you have to take out their families" and defends the tactic of "murdering women and children."

I don't know how else to respond except to say that I strongly disagree, and think many other people would find the idea of him leading three unified branches of government scary as well.

Sound bites taken out of context are pretty easy to do with Trump.

But this is hardly the place for political flame wars.

I have heard it argued that Trump's negafive publicity and overreaching plans ("Build a wall! Make Mexico pay for it! Shut down the Internet!") aren't meant to be serious solutions as much as they are meant to get attention. Nobody's building a wall, but they're damn well talking about immigration now.

Here's a Republican who disagrees with you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11096355

"I voted for Bush twice, McCain, and Romney, and I'll vote for either Hillary or Bernie (two candidates I can't stand) over Trump, and I'm far from alone."

Certainly, this year the GOP wishes they had "superdelegates" who could provide a brake on Trumpism.

The super delegates "votes" don't count for anything until they are cast at the convention: they are not bound. They have never voted against the popular vote winner, most think that would be political suicide for the party. So I think a lot of the super delegate drama is baseless.

Clinton is likely to get some of those superdelegate votes for free simply because she is, unlike Sanders, a member of the party, and a case can be made that the leaders of the party should not cast their superdelegate votes for an independent candidate. But I agree that there would be consequences if the superdelegate vote were to reverse the popular choice.

EDIT (correction): Sanders was an independent until 2015, and is now a Democrat, so my point does not apply.

True. To nitpick, technically Bernie isn't independent anymore.

I stand happily corrected.

Vermont doesn't have party registration, so there isn't a clear distinction between being a Democrat or and Independent. The closest available option to registering as a Democrat is running in the Democratic primary, which Bernie has done.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I would argue that your point does still apply. Sanders converted to a Democrat to be available to their platform, but everyone who knows him knows he's not a Democrat. As such, the Democratic party doesn't get any of the fund-raising runoff that a party candidate usually generates.

It is that funding that gets used for other purposes, like securing the House, the Senate, etc., etc., and as such, regardless of his current registration, Sanders is a party outsider, and a victory for him is not as big a win for the party as a Hillary, Biden, Kerry or even Jim Webb win would be.

I agree, as it stands - I will not vote for Hillary if she wins the nomination, I'll write in Bernie, and hope he runs independent - if any candidate had a chance of winning as an independent it would be him - especially if Trump runs as an indy-then it'd be a 4 person horse race for the presidency that would be something to see!

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