Sen. Bernie Sanders cannot win, and he knows it. He has no chance of catching-up in popular votes or pledged delegates. The notion that super delegates will overturn the expressed will of the electorate at the convention is ludicrous. He must redefine victory, both for him and his supporters, to maintain his reputation.
It’s probably too late. His “movement” is becoming a mob, an occasionally violent one, which he refuses to restrain. In picking a fight with Nevada Democrats in general and Harry Reid in particular, Sanders has risked any chance of rising to a leadership role in the senate. The engineer of the last Democratic insurgency is questioning his judgment:
As practical matter, it's not true that @SenSanders has realistic chance to win majority of pledged delegates. How will he land this plane?
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) May 18, 2016
The metaphor is apt: Sanders is a pilot who seems to think he’s a bird. Campaigns have endings, they run out of gas, they navigate contingencies. The senator thinks he’s leading a movement ever upward with no thought of the ground. Fine for him, not so for his passengers.
As long as he sees himself at the head of a movement, Sanders will be unable to heed the calls to reel in the rhetoric and level with his supporters. That’s the danger of dogma: it cannot be recanted without destroying the faith.
Like William Miller, Bernie has led his supporters up the hill to await a miracle that can’t possibly occur. Sanders’ sour grapes are not likely to cause any real harm to the Democratic Party or change the electoral map in the fall. But he does risk a Great Disappointment, having squandered the chance to return his supporters safely to earth.