“I am pretty good in arithmetic,” Sanders said on June 7th, “and I know that the fight in front of us is a very, very steep fight.” He’s no quitter, and after another two weeks of fighting a very, very steep battle of arithmetic, today he announced his answer. “It doesn’t appear that I’m gonna be the nominee.”  

I guess he checked wikipedia, subtracted 12.7 million from 16.5 million popular votes and figured he was a bit short, seeing no more primaries before the convention. So maybe it’s time he started helping the Democrats instead of the Republicans? But that’s a political calculation, and he’s better at arithmetic.

Anyway Trump has figured it out, and the best points (completely false, but not pants-on-fire) in his first, almost-sort-of-sane speech were Bernie’s main talking points: 

“We’ll never be able to fix a rigged system by counting on the same people who rigged it in the first place. The insiders wrote the rules of the game to keep themselves in power, and in the money. That’s why we’re asking Bernie Sanders’ voters to join our movement, so together we can fix the system for all Americans.” —Trump channelling Bernie

Thanks, Bernie. You wrote the strongest part of his speech, and then told us over and over and over that what Trump’s saying is the honest-to-God truth. But it’s not. No, the Democratic Party was not rigged for the insiders. In fact you got only 43.5% of the popular vote, but the “rigged system” gave you 45.2% of the elected delegates — more than you deserved.

Now back on April 7, Bernie said, “I think the idea of a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for this country. I will do everything in my power and work as hard as I can to make sure that does not happen.”

Now that’s a terrific and totally clear. But I don’t get it. Everything in your power? There’s one thing you could do that would help more than anything else. It takes only 10 seconds. It couldn’t be easier. Just read what Clinton did for Obama on June 7, 2008 — even though she was slightly ahead in the popular vote and so had infinitely more reason to hold out than you do.

On that June 7th Clinton said: “I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary campaign he has won. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him, and I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.”

Why can’t you even muster a “Yeah, you should all vote for Hillary; I’m going to.” How hard is that?