That was a BFD. And a belated thanks to Kansas, Nebraska, and Maine. But Sanders' victory in Michigan, per 538, was "one of the greatest upsets in modern political history".

Which makes you wonder if he may do better than he's polling elsewhere, either in other rust belt states, or just generally. It also shows that he can be competitive with non-white voters outside of the South. And it shows that Clinton's last minute lie that he didn't support the auto bailout didn't work.

Sanders is still down in delegates, and, thanks to proportional allocation in Michigan and a big loss in Mississippi, that didn't change last night (in fact, it got somewhat worse). But for now i'm just very happy to see a surprise win for Sanders, and i'm happy to see that Sanders' message does resonate with people in post-industrial economies like Michigan. Whatever happens in this primary, politicians would be idiots to not take notice of that.

I think we'd all be wise to be working at making our peace with voting HRC in November, but every vote Sanders wins matters for urging her left - which I think she can safely do, considering the starkness of the alternative, and would be such a good thing consider the awful trend the country's ben stuck in...

nope nope and nope. first off, he just won Michigan when he was expected to lose by 20pts, so i don't know why winning means we should resign ourselves to the candidate we really really really dislike. second, any moves she makes to the left will only last as long as the primary. she'll move back to the center-right as soon as the general starts. before that if she can.

stop raining on our parade!

But the point is that Sanders would have to win something like 80% of the votes from this point forward in order to catch up with Hilary. Realistically, that's impossible.

Not sure where you're getting that number. You can go to 538 or any number of delegate tracking sites and see each candidates targets per state. Sanders has a very difficult path and it would be a huge upset if he were to win, but it's not 80% per state.

And to reiterate what min said, i seriously don't get the point of these comments. If you're expecting us to turn this into a "Hillary's inevitable" blog at this point, forget it. Plenty of time for "making our peace" after the convention, if it's necessary. Until then, we'll keep advocating for our candidate and cheering his wins.

...

...

...You know, I've done, and continue to do, what I can to spread the Bernie love, having reached adulthood during Reagan's first term and watched the right get even more extreme and lowest-common-denominator ever since. And I'm going to put my vote where my mouth is. But I don't think there's been a Democrat in the White House since Jimmy Carter, and make no apologies for being a political pessimist, given the last 36 years in this country.

I feel a little attacked for not being hardcore enough for you guys, and that's not cool...

BU, i like your comments and i'm sorry it felt like you were being attacked. From our perspective, we felt like *we* were being attacked in that i've put up two positive Bernie posts and the comments were all variations of "You know he can't win, right?" even though i pre-emptively acknowledged his challenges in the posts.

I get, and share, your pessimism, but to the extent that my blog has any influence on the outside world (i know it doesn't), i'd like these posts to be positive and encouraging. As you've said, the better Bernie does, the better effect it will have in the long run, whatever that effect is. That won't happen if we spend all our time talking about how he can't win. I do think Bernie has a slight chance of winning this thing after his historic surprise win in Michigan, and given that his campaign is driven by the motivation of his supporters, i want to keep things positive.

If you feel like you were attacked because i quoted you, that was just my way of appropriating your phrasing, which is better than what i had in my head (something about eating a shit sandwich). It wasn't meant to be quoting you disparagingly. And it's definitely not a case of you not being hardcore enough or anything like that. Just asking to push that pessimism down for a while, on this site. We're all (probably!) going to have to unite and convince Min that she has to vote for Hillary to prevent Trump from winning New Jersey, but we're not there yet... :-)

you can all go eat a shit sandwich if you think you're going to convince me of anything.
I'M UNCONVINCEABLE!!!!!

and if you try to woo me with reason, i'll bite your face.

Well, I'm impressed with Senator Sanders' record of public service, experience, accomplishment, focus on fairness and justice, and I've found him to be the most impressively sincere and gutsy candidate for President in my entire political adulthood, going back 33 years now - those are facts. -I'm with him all the way. Period.

If y'all don't want to talk about grand strategy, okay. I'm glad we understand each other a little better now.

(Would it be okay to grouse about the subtle ways the mass media displays bias against? Like, I can't believe they have so much trouble finding a picture of the Senator with his mouth closed to lead an article with. It certainly doesn't begin and end with the 'Bernie can't win' [which I've never said] they keep repeating like they want to create the reality...)

Oh, yeah, griping about media bias is a time honored tradition here!

I went in and did my civic duty early today.

-Momma said something I liked coming back from voting - that she's not wild about the socialism thing with Bernie, but then it's just Christian for people to look out for each other. She's a nice church lady, not real, what you'd call liberal, but really put out by the bad-mouthing and hate politics on the right.

Why don't you hear that from church people 'voting their principals' more often?

Thanks for voting, BU!

Your line about churchgoers reminds me of Bernie's flipping of the phrase "family values":

https://berniesanders.com/time-to-support-real-family-values/

I've posted that essay on my forum.