My kingdom for a horrifying rating in this thread
The only thing I will say is that it is too early to rely on polls. Remember, we have 6 more months of this shit, two conventions to slog through, VP picks, debates, and the usual cases of foot in mouth.
It's worth noting he was around 6.5 points behind Clinton until a week or two ago, this bump seems to be less to do with a fault of Clinton, and more the fact Trump finally put his rivals away and became the de facto nominee. I would expect a similar bounce for Clinton once Sanders is gone. Though the question now becomes when will Sanders concede? Will he concede after California or DC, and reluctantly agree to endorse Clinton, and maybe campaign for her too to get his holdout supporters to support her? Or will he actually go all the way to the convention, and make a play at stealing the nomination from her by having the super delegates somehow all go to him?
To be fully honest, I'm not really sure what the hell Sanders is planning. The 2008 primary was much more hostile and vicious between Obama and Clinton, but even then, there was some amount of civility, at least towards the party itself. But you have Sanders now accusing both Clinton and the DNC of being corrupt, and trying to rile his supporters up against them, making them doubt the Democratic party in its entirety. Even Clinton at her worst in 2008 only attacked Obama, she never attacked the integrity of the DNC and the party as a whole, but not only do you have Sanders calling the DNC chairperson, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, corrupt, he's also saying that if he's president she will not be renominated, but he's endorsed and is supporting her primary challenger in order to knock her out of the House because he was upset that she attacked him for the Nevada shit, which seems fairly reasonable to do after what happened, and after Sander's half-hearted 'apology'. Bernie has gotten awfully vindictive, and seems completely okay with ripping apart anyone who he sees in his way at all, or anyone he at least can use as a scapegoat.
I'm honestly not convinced Sanders is not going to try to pull a coup against Clinton at the DNC. He's been laying pretty hard into Clinton and the party itself recently, and polls numbers show that his supporters opinion of Clinton continues to plummet, which will negatively affect Clinton's poll numbers. Sanders may be deliberately attempting to make Clinton's numbers against Trump as negative as possible, in order to bolster the argument that he's been making over the last few weeks, that the super delegates should give him the nomination because his numbers are presently better against Trump. It's unlikely to work, but I suppose it's theoretically possible. Though I sincerely doubt Sanders could go onto win the general after pulling that, stealing the nomination via super delegates at the last moment, especially after he's attacked Clinton as much as he has, despite her going soft on him, would enrage a large quantity of her supporters. And if his coup fails in the end, and Clinton wins the nomination regardless, Sanders is likely to have divided the left enough that T rump can sail in easily.
