Should Bernie Hold or Fold?

So now, even some of the most ardent political supporters of Bernie Sanders – think MoveOn.org – are urging him to pack it in.  Reality bites, they say, and Hillary Clinton has won the Democrat presidential nomination fair and square.

Of course, to say anything involving Hillary is in any way fair and square is an oxymoron, but do these people have a legitimate point?

Absolutely not.

Start with the fact that this process was totally rigged, fixed to assure Hillary’s – and only Hillary’s – nomination from the get-go.  The 700+ “superdelegates,” the political hacks who take their marching orders from the party leaders, represent a catastrophic insurance policy for the establishment, and they turned out to be absolutely necessary for her to stagger over the finish line.  She has locked up 574 of them, compared to 48 for Bernie.  If they had broken even 50-50, the nomination would still be up for grabs.

Now, if Bernie had remained anywhere near the 2% in the polls where he started this race, or 10%, or 20%, or even 30%, it would be fair to expect him to bend to the reality of loss.  But he has won 23 contests, lit a fire under the party’s base and represented a stunningly legitimate challenge to the raw political power of the joyless, soulless Clinton operation that more closely resembles an inner city political machine than a national campaign.  As one observer recently put it, it has the grim feel of the Bataan Death March.

Then there is the matter of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.  Never have we witnessed a party chairman so obviously and flagrantly biased in favor of one candidate.  Her long association with the Clinton family makes her uniquely unqualified to serve as an impartial arbiter of a nomination contest, not to mention one of the most unappealing political figures in recent memory.

One suspects that Ms. Wasserman-Schultz might have, uh, suggested to the Associated Press that they call up uncommitted superdelegates and coerce enough of them into supporting Hillary one day before Tuesday’s final primaries so they could run breathless headlines pronouncing her the nominee and guarantee Debbie’s girl would not be embarrassed in the California primary.  What the AP did was absolutely shameful.  I thought they were supposed to be a paragon of impartial news coverage.  Silly me.

But all of that is window dressing compared to the ultimate reason for Bernie to stay in the fight.  That would be the FBI primary.  Why in the world would Bernie drop out when a criminal investigation involving dozens of FBI agents into all manner of criminal activity by the former Secretary of State has not yet been concluded?

Even if she is not indicted – a highly likely outcome from a Justice Department run by Obama leftists – she will be roasted on a spit by Donald Trump, and rightfully so.  If her obvious crimes are buried and an indictment is not forthcoming, do you really believe FBI investigators who studied her criminal activity under a microscope won’t either leak their findings, or even resign in protest?

Consider just this section of the Federal Records Act: “whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”

The bottom line is that, just given what we have already learned from the Inspector General’s report and other sources, Hillary Clinton is actually disqualified from holding any federal office.  Think about that.

Will not even the most partisan of Clintonistas blanch at the prospects of their mortally wounded candidate getting drawn and quartered by Trump?  Perhaps not – incredibly, 70% of Democrats in a recent poll said she should be the nominee even if she is indicted – but at a minimum, the superdelegates would be hard pressed to continue supporting her.  And Bernie would stand as the only alternative.  The notion of parachuting in a Joe Biden or John Kerry to negate the only other legitimate candidate would turn Bernie’s famously revolt-minded supporters into bomb throwers who would make Trump’s most rabid partisans look like pacifists.

No, it’s not likely that Bernie will win the nomination.  But yes, there is plenty of reason for him to carry on.  It does not mean he will, but given that he has been “beaten” by the most corrupt candidate in presidential history, is 74 years old, will never reach these heights again and has nothing better to do with his time, why wouldn’t he?