re: #156 ericblair

If a candidate gets over 50% of pledged delegates on the first round, they win. Then the rest of the Democrats suck it up and get she/he over the finish line.

If not, there is a “contested convention”; those are the rules as agreed. There is a concentrated effort right now to make this sound like the end of the world, and splinter the party beyond repair. This is the same campaign that was trying to deny the holder of the majority (not plurality) of delegates the nomination in 2016, so I’m not exactly convinced of their sincerity.

I don’t even get the logic of this. How would a plurality delegate holder unite the party over someone who had to get a majority of delegates? How would someone who couldn’t get over 50% of the democratically-elected delegates of the first ballot a uniter over someone who could pull together 50% after making enough agreements to satisfy enough of the others to pull through?

Here is the thing, and I know it sounds unfair, but that’s politics. Bernie’ s supporters are young and least connected to the Democratic party. If he is the leading vote getter and leads in delegates by a large margin going into the convention, and then he isn’t nominated, a lot of them may not vote or vote third party, and that creates an opening for Trump. OTOH, Bernie is popular with regular Democrats, and they will vote for him even if he wasn’t their first choice. I just hope someone gets a majority before the convention, even if it is Bernie. I don’t care about fairness, I just want to beat Trump.