For a man who supposedly cannot win, Bernie Sanders is doing pretty nicely

[bemildred]

For a man who supposedly cannot win, Bernie Sanders is doing pretty nicely. Even his opponents in the Hillary Clinton camp have been forced to concede that much. Yet as America’s presidential primary season grinds on and the nation looks ahead to the party conventions in July, it is time to admit something more. Stand aside, Donald Trump: the big story of the 2016 US presidential election, underplayed and under-reported until now, is the extraordinary rise of Sanders.

He has gone from being a joke – a socialist! From Vermont! – to getting the full blowtorch treatment from the Democratic establishment, which sees him now as less of a batty uncle than a Bond villain. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asked last week: “Is Mr Sanders positioning himself to join the ‘Bernie or bust’ crowd, walking away if he can’t pull off an extraordinary upset, and possibly helping put Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in the White House? If not, what does he think he’s doing?”

Well, just campaigning, really. Sanders had said that Hillary Clinton was unqualified to be president, which is a tough thing to say, and may or may not be true, but in this year of all years (think of the Republican fight over the wives of Trump and Cruz; think, if you can bear it, of The Donald’s penis) it’s hardly World War III.

What has most upset the Hillary crowd is the horrid inconvenience of Sanders. The media, too (what on Earth is the point of political punditry after this campaign season?), have underestimated and patronised the Vermonter. An elderly, eccentric Jewish man from a picture-postcard state so outside the American mainstream that advertising billboards are banned there was hardly going to go the distance. He would fade. He’d get sweaty in the Deep South and lost in the hugeness of the Midwest. He would pine for the trees and cows and greenery of his home state. Clinton would crush him.

http://www.newstatesman.com/world/2016/04/man-who-supposedly-cannot-win-bernie-sanders-doing-pretty-nicely

[Faux pas]

1. Kickin'

[griffi94]

2. Bernies has done much better than he was expected to do.

Unlikely he'll win but he got much closer than most people thought he would.

[Buzz Clik]

3. He has performed beyond expectations.

Here's his announcement. It's a bit hard to take him seriously:

He changed all that, to his credit and to the credit of those who support.

[wyldwolf]

4. He's not doing as well as he appears to be

In the only measurement that matters, he's further behind Hillary than she ever was behind Obama.

[Jefferson23]

5. BERN!

K&R

[IamMab]

6. Still not winning, though. ¯|_(ツ)_|¯

[Land of Enchantment]

7. Oh yeah? I'd say the last 8 states' voters would disagree.