What They Oughta Say

Bernie’s “Plurality Must Win” spiel is eliciting some pretty lame responses from the other Democratic presidential candidates. Heard most often is, “Everybody ought to play by the rules.”  But Sanders isn’t saying that “Candidate with plurality of elected delegates get the nomination” should be an official rule, exactly. He’s saying that for other candidates to bow out in favor of the plurality-winner would be the democratic thing to do.

One not-quite-as-lame counterargument, which so far I’ve heard only from Biden,  is to point out that by this standard 2016 Bernie should have deferred to Hillary long before he did.

But a stronger approach would question the “democratic thing to do” premise itself – something like this:

“Wait a minute.  This isn’t a personal beauty contest. It’s a discussion about the ideas, policies and positions that are now the best for shaping this country’s future.  Let’s suppose as the convention approaches there are two remaining  candidates who want to eliminate all existing private health insurance and three who would strengthen and improve the ACA instead.  And let’s suppose the Medicare-for-all candidates have 30% and 10% of the delegates respectively.  And suppose the strengthen-ACA candidates are 20-20-20.  Does that mean that Medicare-for-all, despite losing 40 to 60, is the democratic choice?”