Both Clinton and O'Malley are also against Citizens United. President Obama was also against Citizens United. However President Obama with the best small dollar fund raising machine in the history of the Democratic Party still had to use a super pac to keep the spending close. Sanders plan to fore-go super pacs is noble but will doom him and explains why Sanders will not be the nominee. Let outline three reasons why I strongly disagree with the OP and the premise on which the OP is based.
First, the OP ignores the fact that Sanders is simply not viable in a general election contests which is why Sanders will not be the nominee. Sanders is not expanding his appeal to other voters in large part because no one has shown that Sanders is viable in a general election contest where the Kochs will be spending $887 million and the RNC candidate may be spending another billion dollars. This lack of viability will keep sanders from expanding his appeal to other groups in the Democratic coalition. Sanders is not going to appeal to voters in key demographic blocks without some real evidence of viability. For example, African American voters are concerned about electability http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/09/bernie_sanders_presidential_campaign_what_would_it_take_for_the_vermont.html
. For as much as black Americans might like his policy positions—which fit their enthusiasm for a stronger safety net—they’re also strategic voters, not ideological stalwarts. Electability is key, and as a consequence, they tend to back the establishment choice: Al Gore over Bill Bradley; John Kerry over John Edwards. On occasion, blacks will back a factional candidate, like Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. But Jackson had the reverse problem—he couldn’t win enough whites.
Again, Sanders would have a stronger campaign if someone could provide a good explanation as to viability. Nominating Sanders would be a vain and useless act unless one can show that he can win in the general election and no one believes this (including Sanders own campaign manager).
Second, the OP assumes Sanders actually thinks that he can win the nomination. Sanders own campaign manager is not clear on this and only wants Sanders to be a meaningful candidate. if you read the last three paragraphs of this article from Sanders campaign manager, Sanders campaign manager does not outline a path to the nomination but a path to be a "serious" candidate.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/12/bernie-sanders-s-strategist-this-is-how-we-win.html
If all goes according to plan, Sanders will have won enough delegates by mid-March to be a serious contender for the nomination. That would signal a shift for Sanders; it would be time to court the establishment. “Then we have to offer fundamental assurances to party leaders who say he’s a socialist. He’s been in the Congress 25 years and his program is not to replace the current system with socialism, it’s to revive the middle class.”
Sanders’s outsider campaign has been likened to Jesse Jackson’s insurgent campaign in 1988—it wasn’t until the Wisconsin primary in April that Michael Dukakis defeated Jackson. But Devine thinks the more apt analogy to today’s politics is 1984 when the combination of Gary Hart’s insurgency and Jackson’s coalition of minority voters together almost beat Walter Mondale. “Jackson never received support from the institutional party, but he demanded respect. If we register, as Jesse Jackson did, millions of people, that would be a huge lift for the party in Senate races.” And for whichever Democrat reaches the magic number of delegates next year to secure the nomination.
The idea that Sanders is good for the Democratic Party is a hard lesson for Clinton to appreciate in the heat of battle. But he’s got voters fired up and ready to go, and Democrats need that energy.
The apparent goal of this campaign is not for Sanders to be the nominee but to be considered a serious candidate who might almost beat Hillary Clinton. Again, that means that a vote for Sanders is at best a protest vote which will do nothing to undo Citizens United.
This article is silent on what Sanders intend to do in a general election contest in that it appears that Sanders campaign manager does not expect that Sanders will be the nominee. A vote for Sanders is not a vote to change Citizens United if even Sanders own campaign manager doubts that he will be the nominee.
Third, the OP ignores that the only way to change Citizens United is to win the White House in 2016. Clinton and others (including Sanders) have promised to appoint SCOTUS justices who will vote to repeal Citizens United. The only other way of changing Citizens United is to regain control of both houses of Congress with veto proof majorities and pass legislation to lessen the effect of Citizens United or to pass a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United. Neither one of of these alternatives are likely. Appointing Justices to the SCOTUS who will vote to overturn Citizens United is the only viable mechanism of undoing this decision.
A vote for Sanders is not an effective way to change Citizens United. I live in the real world and in the real world one does not support a candidate who cannot win.
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