The Sanders Campaign is a dead parrot, says Richard Wolffe

Clinton triumphs; Sanders slumps. Now the real contest can begin

Like the Monty Python parrot, the Bernie Sanders campaign is no more. 

It has ceased to be. 

Its metabolic processes are now history. 

It’s kicked the bucket and shuffled off its mortal coil.

. . . .

Clinton will enter the convention with a clear lead among pledged delegates. 

On that basis, there is no room for Sanders to argue that the superdelegates should ignore the popular vote and the mood of the party to flip their support.

To the Sanders supporters who have already pressed send on their tweets, comments and emails: I know. 

It doesn’t matter. 

Numbers, facts, delegates, convention rules, logic, reason, actual votes, party unity: none of it matters.

In reality, winning never really mattered to Bernie Sanders. 

The exercise of power was never the point, even if it became a self-delusional diversion along the way.

What mattered was ideological purity. 

Like all good Cold War-era socialists, Sanders was far more interested in critiquing the system than running it. 

It was always easier to feel morally superior than engage in the messy business of building a winning and governing coalition.

Then again, the Clintons have some kind of unnatural desire to make you feel morally superior. 

Between the paid speeches and the private email server, Hillary Clinton seems determined to make life difficult for herself and her campaign.

Her great good fortune is that she won’t, ultimately, be compared to a self-righteous socialist. 

Instead, she will be compared to a self-inflated socialite.

There may be a life-form on earth that cannot feel morally superior to Donald Trump, but the planet has probably evolved too far already. 

There are Latin American presidents, with large legal teams in Panama, who can feel smug when they look at the Great Orange Hope.

Trump is the unique political species who urinates on his own party as he celebrates victory. 

“Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they claim delegates with voters and voting,” said the man whose previous experience of voting rules involved picking a Miss Universe. 

“It’s a crooked system. It’s a system that’s rigged.”

Thus spoke the winner of the crooked system’s latest contest, as he predicted storming into the rigged party’s convention. 

With a party leader like this, who needs opponents?

. . . .

But it’s past time for Clinton and the Democratic party to turn towards the general election. 

They have an unexpected and historic opportunity to turn a victory into a rout: to win not just the White House, but to take back the Senate and quite possibly the House.

They could use the next two months to press their case, recruit down-ticket candidates and organize early for November. 

Or they could continue to debate the finer points of bank regulations and free trade deals.

It’s time to stop pining for the fjords, and start running against the party that Trump built.