HRC KNEW those were going to be open primaries when she decided to run.

[Ken Burch]

She quietly agreed to that and accepted it as the situation that obtained.

She could have run the kind of campaign that would have appealed to pro-Bernie independents and pro-Bernie Dems(of which there are a large number-Bernie doesn't ONLY get votes from indies). She chose not to run that campaign.

If she had beaten Bernie or another Democratic candidate by carrying the independent vote in open primaries, she and her supporters would never have accepted it of that candidate or her/his supporters had argued that her victories somehow didn't count.

So it's hypocritical and absurd for HRC and her supporters to dismiss Bernie's victories in open primary states as somehow being less legitimate than the results in closed primary states.

A win is a win.

[Joob]

1. Source? Is this actually happening? All votes should matter... nt

[DemocracyDirect]

2. To win the general election the nominee must win independents...

... yet some here say that the nominee must win only among Democrats.

[DanTex]

3. And Bernie knew there were going to be superdelegates.

[Hortensis]

4. Sanders' victories are not less legitimate, and no one

is saying they are. The votes of all people in all states are equally important.

The realities of caucus dynamics, open primaries, etc., are just part of the analyses of why Sanders is doing better in those states. Of course, a big one is that the states that have gone big for him are mostly conservative, small, and predominantly white. Not less legitimate, just less diverse.

Now, if I were speculating, I'd be wondering how much sex bias had to do with it. Not IF since it is everywhere, but how much and how much more weight it's carrying in those states since it's not being offset by other factors more favorable to her.

[Ken Burch]

6. Bernie is running to HRC's left.

it doesn't matter if the states he carries have been more conservative(other than showing he could put those states in play in the fall).

[Hortensis]

9. The Lifelong Republicans Who Love Bernie Sanders

Some conservatives are defying expectation and backing Bernie Sanders. ... These Republicans for Sanders defy neat categorization. Some are fed up with the status quo in Washington, and believe that Sanders, with his fiery populist message, is the presidential contender most likely to disrupt it. Others have voted Republican for years, but feel alarmed by what they see as the sharp right turn the party has taken.

Bernie as an alternative to Trump for non-college-educated anti-establishment right-wingers instead of Trump. And for others conservatives, Bernie as a populist outsider alternative to the unthinkable of voting for the mainstream Democratic candidate.

Sanders’s promise to wrest power away from Wall Street and return it to the American middle class taps into the same vein of populist anger that fueled the rise of the Tea Party. It’s also a message that resonates with mainstream Republicans and Democrats. Sixty-two percent of Republicans, for example, believe that large corporations wield too much influence on American politics, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in May.

Not measured in most of these states is how many conservatives are crossing the ballot to sabotage our chances against the GOP by voting against our stronger candidate. Especially when they don't have anyone they like themselves and expect to just vote for whoever gets their nomination.

Btw, in spite of this, Bernie could not carry any conservative states if he were our nominee. The huge right wing character assassination machine has been held off, but if it is deployed against him, a very large portion of Sanders' support -- on both sides but even more on the right -- will disappear into the usual range of doubt, disillusionment, dislike, shock, anger, and calls for investigations and indictments.

[Ken Burch]

11. HRC is not our stronger candidate.

If she were, she'd be doing BETTER than Bernie against the Republicans. It's not add HRC's ratings in those polls represent our maximum possible support levels.

What Bernie does is expand the potential Democratic vote without taking and stands on the issues that betray core Democratic voting blocs(unlike Bill and Hill, who betrayed 80% of the Democratic base by attacking the poor and supporting NAFTA in '92).

It can't serve any progressive goals to nominate the less-progressive candidate. There are no votes HRC can get that Bernie can't and you cannot serve progressive politics by promising never to push for anything but tiny increments or by dismissing any need to challenge corporate control of politics and life.

[Hortensis]

19. HRC is POST 30 years of character assassination.

Current perceptions of Bernie are all pre- character assassination. Right wing power blocks have very strong media organizations and billions of dollars to unleash on him, Ken.

All the wishful thinking in the world won't change that. As it is, even if he is not our nominee, he is now well known and we should expect to see him muddied up and used in the GE to smear down-ticket Democrats by association.

[Arkansas Granny]

5. Right, a win is a win and Hillary has won more popular votes,

more pledged delegates and has more super delegates. At this point her path to the nomination is much shorter than Bernie's. We'll just have to see how it plays out.

[lakeguy]

7. they are in fact, more legitimate because

they more accurately represent the voting pool in the GE. if you only include 20 some percent of potential voters, that does not represent the electorate that will actually vote to decide who the president will be.

[leftynyc]

8. So first we had whining about

superdelegates and now about closed primaries. Are there no rules - that were all known before either started running - that wont be complained about as if they weren't all known about ahead? Why should independents should be choosing the DEMOCRATIC party nominee? If independents want to run, let them run under that label if they don't like the rules as they stand.

[Ken Burch]

13. We need progressive independents to become Democrats.

The only way to do that is to make the primaries a chance to move the party past bland centrism. If HRC wins the nomination and makes no significant concessions on the platform to reflect progressive ideas, we'll never ever be able to get progressive independents to become Democrats.

Besides which, Bernie's program is much more popular than HRC's, and we can only increase our support base by incorporating large chunks of it, so Dems who want the party to be progressive should want to provide a way into the party for progressives of any origin.

And I wasn't even complaining about closed primaries(they should be allowed, providing same-day re-registration is permitted). i was just saying that open primaries shouldn't be treated as though they matter less tham closed primaries.

[leftynyc]

16. Really?

Bernie's program is much more popular? Then why is he losing in delegates (pledged and otherwise) and the popular vote? And after the Bernie supporter's disdainful attitude about the south, African Americans and any other group that doesn't fall at the feet of your preferred candidate, I find your complaining entirely hypocritical.

[Ken Burch]

18. Largely because HRC had been running for eight straight years

and because a fair amount of people bought into the "only HRC can win" canard.

And we don't disdain African Americans...we only disdain the conservative Clinton operatives who endlessly accused Bernie of seeing the fight against racism as secondary to the fight for economic justice, when he has always been equally and passionately committed to both(and when the economic justice and antiracist movement are never actually in conflict with each other), and who claimed, with no evidence to support the claim at all, that Bernie was lying about his years or activism in the freedom movement.

All we really said about the South is that, while Super Tuesday didn't go well for us, it didn't end the campaign and it didn't prove that Bernie was only supported by white people. The campaign goes on, we have steadily increased our support among all democraphics, including AA and other POC, and the race is still in play-none of which are untrue or illegitimate things to say.

[leftynyc]

20. Uh - no

I remember QUITE clearly the OP's about how the south doesn't matter because they're red states...right up until the crowing about Bernie winning Utah - THEN winning red states was important. Just like I remember the whining about superdelegates....right up to the time it was realized he would need those same delegates to win. And I remember QUITE clearly the condescending bullshit about how African Americans were too uninformed or stupid to know what's good for them. The Sanders supporters have been nothing but hypocrites this ENTIRE campaign.

[firebrand80]

10. Bernie knew there would be southern states nt

[Ken Burch]

14. And he tried just as hard as HRC to win them, once he filed.

She had been campaigning in the South since '08...he hadn't even thought of running until probably late 2014. She was always going to be the favorite on name familiarity and earlier organization.

All we really object to is the implication that Super Tuesday proved that no one but whites would ever support Bernie.

His support among AA voters has generally been much higher in the post Super Tuesday states, he breaks even with HRC on AA voters under 30, and in Wisconsin he took 43% of all POC votes.

It will be at least that high, if not higher, in NY.

[firebrand80]

15. My point is that

People on DU have claimed that her southern victories were unimportant

[Ken Burch]

17. Not unimportant, just not the end of the campaign.

We acknowledged that we did badly in those states. That's all that we could be expected to do. Since then, we've done better.

For whatever reason, southern AA voters preferred the more conservative candidate(among two candidates equally committed to a passionate antiracist agenda) on Super Tuesday. AA voters are splitting much more evenly as we go along, and I think they will come close to breaking even in NY and Cali. And they may surprise us in D.C.,-if a HRC victory there was a certainty, why would anyone have tried to keep Bernie off the D.C. ballot on a technical mistake for which no one but the D.C. Democratic organization was to blame?

I won't apologize for being an optimist. Nobody should.

[BeyondGeography]

12. This race is very much like 2008, the big exception being Hillary won big in the South

Sanders is carrying the rest of the Obama states, often with very similar margins. He'll never recoup all the ground he gave up in the South.