Bernie Sanders has no plausible path to secure the Democratic nomination: To earn a majority of pledged delegates, he'd need to win 68 percent of those left outstanding, even though he’s only won less than 46 percent of available delegates to date. But instead of acknowledging this reality, Sanders’ campaign is now taking a scorched-earth approach toward its opponents—even if that means helping Donald Trump win the White House.

An alarming new report from the New York Times details Sanders' destructive ramp-up, explaining that the senator is now hoping to "inflict[...] a heavy blow on Hillary Clinton" and is "willing to do some harm to Mrs. Clinton" so that he might "arrive at the Philadelphia convention with maximum political power."

And the Sanders campaign is quite insistent that it doesn't care whether its attempt to seize this supposed fount of power jeopardizes Democrats' chances at holding the White House, as long as it keeps Sanders' non-existent hopes alive:

Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Mr. Sanders, said the campaign did not think its attacks would help Mr. Trump in the long run, but added that the senator's team was "not thinking about" the possibility that they could help derail Mrs. Clinton from becoming the first woman elected president. "The only thing that matters is what happens between now and June 14," Mr. Devine said, referring to the final Democratic primary, in the District of Columbia. "We have to put the blinders on and focus on the best case to make in the upcoming states."

There you have it. Sanders is flat-out "not thinking about" whether his efforts to hurt Clinton could aid Trump—he's just going to "put the blinders on" and worry only about himself, not the national and global issues at stake. It's an absurd and outrageous win-at-all-costs strategy: absurd because Sanders cannot even win, no matter what “power” he might grab hold of; outrageous because Trump poses an existential threat to this country—and to this world.

Sanders claims he still wants to influence the Democratic agenda, but if he finishes out his campaign by trying to tear down the one person who can actually stop Trump, how can he expect anyone at the Democratic convention to listen to what he has to say?