Sanders or Clinton

It looks this evening as though Clinton will have a majority of pledged delegates. It is possible that Sanders could persuade the super-delegates to come over to his side to give him the nomination, given his better polling against Trump, but this is unlikely given that the super-delegates belong to the elite that stands to loose were Sanders to push through campaign finance reform. Moreover, they have already given their pledges to Clinton, and are nervous, perhaps, that the issues that Sanders has campaigned on are a shift too far to the left.

Of course that is only one reading of the situation; another, given the overlap between Trump and Sanders on international trade and campaign finance, is that the increasingly poor, disillusioned and disenfranchised middle class are rebelling  and, as one establishment figure noted tonight, flocking to the "populist" candidates. For populist read "people who don't buy the elites' argument that things are too complicated for the humble man in the street to understand - so let us get on with running things (and profiting nicely from it)". I'm not unsympathetic to Trump's remark that the Clintons have turned turned fund-raising into a self-enrichment art form.

Since the most likely scenario is that the pledged delegates won't switch sides, Clinton will be the Democratic Party's nominee in the fall. So what can Sander hope to accomplish? Just getting his issues onto the party manifesto (or "platform") is no guarantee that Clinton if she were to be elected, would act on any of it. Sanders needs leverage.

When Clinton lost to Obama eight years ago, she needed to keep on his good side since, anticipating this campaign's run, a cabinet position would look far better on her CV than another few years in the Senate - she needed that "executive experience". So she was in no position to get her pet policies into Obama's agenda (even if she had any other than "stay the course", which is far from clear to me).

Sanders on the other hand now has a brand which he didn't a year ago, and could easily mount another campaign in four years time; and he has had no support from, and therefore no obligation not to stick it to, the party establishment. That's Sander's leverage; "adopt these policies or I will challenge you again in four years" (possibly as an independent).

That's my take. It'll be nteresting to see how this plays out over the next few days.