It's alive!

I started two different posts, which then became related; and now, with this comment, I can stitch them together and save some column inches; or however this stuff is measured in cyberspace (even that term dates me now!).  It's a bit of a Frankenstein monster, because I didn't even try to hide the sutures.  Here is the comment, at least:

This is part of the larger issue for the campaign of a lack of introspection or self examination. All failures are external and blamed on someone else. It's the poor, the South, mainstream media, lack of understanding or education or misunderstanding on the part of supporters of Clinton, corruption, and on and on. Never an examination of deficiencies in their own message. Never trying to understand how the campaign failed to connect. No introspection on how to better promote the message to those that aren't currently Sanders supporters.

--rustypickup

All I can add is:  the fish still rots from the head.

So, here's the thing:

Bernie Sanders' wife and adviser Jane Sanders says his campaign will do well in the remaining contests because they are open primaries, which she describes as "more democratic."

In an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Thursday, Jane Sanders noted that Bernie Sanders won Rhode Island on Tuesday, which was an open primary, allowing independents as well as Democrats to vote for her husband.

"If you close the primary and you only have people who have been in the Democratic Party for years, what you are doing is effectively shutting the door on the millions of people that Bernie has brought into the political process during this election," she said.

You really can't have it both ways at once:

Well, here’s what I think,” Sanders replied. “I think at the end of the day, what Democrats all over this country want to make sure is that somebody like a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz does not end up in the White House. And I think what more and more Democrats are seeing is that Bernie Sanders is the stronger candidate.”

“She’s getting more votes,” the host pressed.

“Well, she is getting more votes. A lot of that came from the South,” Sanders parried. “But if you look at the polling out there, we do a lot better against Trump and the other Republicans in almost every instance — not every one — than she does. And the reason is that we both get a lot of Democrats, but I get a lot more independents than she does.”

Because many of the states in the South are open primary states.  Oops!  Which either means there are no independents in the South (except you don't register by party in open primary states, and I've never known anyone who had a Democratic Party membership card.  Do you pay dues, or something?), or this theory is shite.  As far as votes go, I'm a Democrat; but technically, I'm an independent, since I've never registered as a Democrat in my life.  And nothing kept me from voting in the Republican primary in Texas, except that I wouldn't have been able to vote in the Democratic primary as well, and that's the one I wanted to vote in.  (which is why I question the "crossover vote" stories.  I don't get to pick one from Party A, one from Party B.  You can only do that in the general.  And the old argument is that your candidate is sure to win, so "cross over" and screw around with the other primary.  Except that theory has been blown to shreds this year in the GOP.)  I prefer open primaries, but "more democratic"?  Then why didn't more Southern voters feel the Bern?

I'm sure it had something to do with poor people.

When Hillary Clinton was just Bill's wife (and almost no one knew who Bill was, aside from the governor of a state almost no one knew anything about), she made a famous remarks baking cookies that, almost 25 years later, she's turned to her advantage.

Maybe that's going to happen with Jane Sanders' comments; but somehow, I don't think so.  In the meantime, she's not doing her husband's campaign any favors:

"Now, Donald Trump has a point. The electoral process — the way it is conducted now in both parties is not good, it is not democratic, it is not smart," Sanders said on Fox Business Network. "We want to change the electoral process by having there be open primaries, same day registration. If independents could vote there is no doubt that the results in the democratic process at least would be very different."

I'm all for same day voter registration, but that's an issue for general elections, too.  I'm also fine with open primaries, but I don't think closed primaries and caucuses are less inherently democratic (and if they are, then Bernie needs to give up the delegates he won in caucus states.).

And then there's this still preaching it round and square stuff:

Jane Sanders also again railed against the superdelegate system.

"It doesn't seem fair that superdelegates can play such an outsized role. I mean, you know, we learned in a democracy one person, one vote. Evidently not in the primary system," she said.

The primary system is not yet based on one person, one vote, because if it was, we'd eliminate delegates altogether and just go with winner take all, as we do in the general (we don't award electors proportionately every fourth November).  If we were to make the system that "democratic," Bernie Sanders would have been shut out months ago.  Again, what's the complaint here, except that her husband didn't win?  And the super delegates?  Can the Sanders campaign please decide whether they want the super delegates, or not?

And then she had to get cute:

We want to let it go through without politicizing it and then we'll find out what the situation is," Sanders said during an interview with Fox's Neil Cavuto.

"That's how we still feel. It would be nice if the FBI moved it along," she said, smiling. 

Presumably she's just channeling her inner H.A. Goodman at this point (I won't link to his nonsense, you can read Charlie Pierce's version of it).  And I don't really want to imply she's carrying water for Chuck Grassley, but I had this in draft form before today, so I'm going to go ahead and use it to say:

There will be no "prosecution" of Hillary Clinton, whether the FBI wants it or not.  Not just because the FBI is not conducting a criminal investigation (and said so last July), but because a criminal prosecution on any serious crime can't take place without a grant jury indictment.

Dear Sen. Grassley:  your reading assignment is the 5th Amendment to the Constitution.  Thank you.

No grand jury indictment, no prosecution, no matter what the FBI may think (and the 12 agents on the case are very influential, I'm sure.)  And is there a grand jury waiting patiently to receive the evidence the FBI has amassed?  What's that?  There is not not?  How is this possible?!

Will there be?  Well, not if the FBI is not conducting a criminal investigation there won't be.  But there won't be a prosecution, period, without a grand jury.

So can we please put this canard to rest?  No, I know we can't; but geez, this is becoming tiresome!  PRESIDENT CLINTON, Grassley.  GET USED TO IT!

That same advice now goes for Jane Sanders.  Sour grapes and whinging about losing are not the best way to behave on the national stage.  Just sayin'.....