Sanders Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver Extrapolating Desperately

Oy.

I'm old enough to remember when the Sanders camp was issuing dark warnings about "elite" Democratic superdelegates awarding the nomination—conspiring to award the nomination—to the candidate who lost the popular vote and/or went to the convention with fewer pledged delegates. But that was then (back when the Sanders camp thought their guy would win the popular vote and/or go the convention with more pledged delegates) and this is now (when Clinton has emerged, per Tapper, as the clear choice of the Democratic electorate and heads to the DNC with a larger share of the popular vote and more pledged delegates).

As for this batshit argument...

TAPPER: Clinton has received a total of 13,027,983 raw votes. That's 55.6%. Sanders have received 10,014,447, which is 42.7%. Why should superdelegates go against what Democratic voters want? WEAVER: Well, Jake, you know those numbers are a little bit deceptive because a lot of states where Sen. Sanders won were in caucus states. And if you extrapolate the population of those states and compare those to similar size states that had primaries, that number gets much, much smaller, the difference between the two gets much, much small, by millions.

A few things.

1. Caucuses are crazy undemocratic:

Caucuses always have extremely low turnout relative to primaries because they make it much more difficult to participate. In real elections we have a phrase for this: voter suppression. Caucuses are really the most effective voter suppression tool in politics today. That usually gets interpreted down to "they give a big advantage to the more organized campaign with more committed supporters." That's true. But again, that's the flip side of saying it's a process that is too time-consuming and byzantine for the vast majority of people to participate.

2. Bernie Sanders did better in caucus states...

So why is Sanders doing better in caucuses than primaries? The most obvious answer is that caucuses reward candidates with diehard supporters. There are often speeches, and sometimes multiple rounds of voting at caucuses. Typically, you have to stick around for a while to vote. That takes devotion, and if you’ve ever met a Sanders fan, you’ll know that many would climb over hot coals to vote for him. Sanders’s strength in caucuses may also be, in part, coincidental. Every state that has held or will hold a Democratic caucus this year has a black population at or below 10 percent of the state’s total population, and black voters have been among Clinton’s strongest demographic groups. Without those black voters, Clinton just can’t match the enthusiasm of Sanders’s backers. (In Southern states, where Clinton romped, her voters were far more enthusiastic than Sanders’s supporters were.)

3. Weaver is arguing that Sanders totally would've gotten millions of additional votes if the caucus states he won had held higher-turnout primaries instead, and then Weaver awards those millions of imaginary/extrapolated votes to Sanders. But caucus vs. primary results in Washington state demonstrate otherwise...

Washington voters delivered a bit of bad news for Bernie Sanders’s political revolution on Tuesday. Hillary Clinton won the state’s Democratic primary, symbolically reversing the outcome of the state’s Democratic caucus in March where Sanders prevailed as the victor. The primary result won’t count for much since delegates have already been awarded based on the caucus. (Sanders won 74 delegates, while Clinton won only 27.) But Clinton’s victory nevertheless puts Sanders in an awkward position.... Roughly 230,000 people participated in the Democratic caucus, The Stranger reported in March. In contrast, more than 660,000 Democratic votes had been tallied in the primary as of Tuesday, according to The Seattle Times. That lopsided reality makes it more difficult for Sanders to argue that his candidacy represents the will of the people. Support The Stranger More than ever, we depend on your support to help fund our coverage. Support local, independent media with a one-time or recurring donation. Thank you!

So, yeah. Just because Sanders won the voter-suppressin' caucus in state X doesn't mean he would've won a voter-empowerin' primary in state X.

But even if you extrapolate the shit out of everything, even if you assume voters in states that held low-turnout caucuses would've backed Sanders at the exact same rates if they had held high-turnout primaries instead, even if you then award millions of imaginary votes to Sanders... "she still leads."

4. I was for Bernie or Hillary or both—I wasn't kidding when I described myself as bitankual. But Bernie lost, fair and square, and the Democratic nomination contest is now over. If their positions were reversed—if HIllary was losing and her people were on TV making the same arguments Bernie's people are making (she won way more imaginary votes, superdelegates should overrule the voters)—the Sanders camp would (rightly) be screaming bloody murder.