And it appears the Cult of Inevitability is alive and well in Seattle...

This was written before the Michigan primary, I'm guessing.

Oh, fine ... DON'T tell us when the GOP caucus is, if that's how ya feel about it ... but you might at least have reminded sloggers that Washington delegates to the Republican National Convention are apportioned entirely on the basis of the May 24 Primary (NOT GOP caucus).

Cue delegate-math-challenged Bernie supporter accusation of media "bias" in 3...2...1...

More like cue reality/democracy challenged Hillary supporter, "schmacky"
Am I right? Wokka wokka wokka

Last checked the democratic nomination race is still going and still contested — even if some would like to pretend otherwise.

Hilary is running out of southern states and many Sanders Friendly states in the west and rust belt are still coming up. To quote Yogi Berra, "It ain't over until it's over."

Wow, I'm impressed by how Matt totally ignored about two miles of baggage cars in the Clinton train wreck.

I vividly recall Clinton’s campaign going full Hindenburg in 2008, and I’m stunned that otherwise reasonable people think that re-running an openly corrupt, craven, duplicitous, and polarizing establishment candidate is a great idea in a year in which voters are in all-out rebellion against the establishment.

She's on Wall Street's payroll, for the FSM's sake.

Actually even if Bernie doesn't get the nomination the fact that he is staying in the race is actually doing something useful.

Every day he is in he is dragging Hillary further and further left. Considering that at the start of this she was sitting just to the right of Nixon, this is a very good thing.

The notion that Clinton is a "champion of human rights" is ludicrous. In 2014, when Netanyahu was slaughtering Palestinian civilians, Clinton was his loudest cheerleader. She cheered as the IDF targeted schools and hospitals, and she rejoiced in the murder of 500 children. Also, she's a great fan of professional war-criminal Henry Kissinger.

Honestly, I don't understand how this kind of thing can be acceptable to anyone. If a candidate praised Ted Bundy or Gary Ridgeway, would that be OK? Of course not... but neither of them murdered nearly as many people as Kissinger or Netanyahu.

Revolutions are never practical or predictable. #feelthebern #wenotme

@9 Bernie may be tugging Hilary's brand to the left, but brands are stretchy things. I'm not so sure her policies have moved much.

The Stranger srsly needs to stop telling people how to fucking think. Its turning into Seattle's passive aggressive aunt with an entitlement complex. I blame the exodus of cool staffers at the paper. That and the robotic tech-bro they employed to create a "relevance algorithm." #hatethis

As a Republican I swore to never vote for a Clinton. She has a chance to get my vote with Trump running. But I will vote a hamster into the white house before I vote for Bernie. I wish there was a law that said people must read the history of socialism and study the EU on socialist economic policies before voting for a socialist. Everyone feeling the Bern thinks about all the great "Free" things we will have. Reminder people that nothing is free. That 1.4 trillion in additional cash revenue would drastically change our country. The biggest change is that that everyone will now pay federal taxes. Yes everyone. Before you think that the EU is so much better you should stop reading your Bernie Memes and study it for yourself. Even the poor pay federal taxes in Denmark and Switzerland. No free rides. I challenge anyone to prove how EU policies have been more successful than the US. The US has higher salaries. Less poverty, and has remained the world power. Can you say that about the EU? The US

Please don't say "look at Denmark". I would argue look at California. One tiny country with 10 million people doesn't represent the EU just like California, Washington, or NY don't represent the US. But until we start crossing states off the list you need to look at the bigger picture.

@ 14, The only people throwing out the "free stuff" lie are willfully ignorant wrong-wingers. Yes, taxes will have to go up to pay for things like single payer healthcare, but it'll be offset by canceling our predatory private health insurance policies. We're willing to pay in order to provide a better life for everyone.

The rich have ruined our nation with their selfishness, exploitation, corruption, and greed-crazed swindling.

Hillary Clinton ... [is] ... a champion of human rights.

Tell that to the people of Iraq, Honduras, Palestine, Bahrain, Libya, Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen. (My sincere apologies to all of the peoples I've overlooked; I'm just mentioning instances where Hillary's behind-the-scenes pimping of violence and destruction for American corporate profit is better known to Americans. For a fuller picture, read Diane Johnstone's Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton.)

Seriously, Matt, are you being coerced into writing this unexamined drivel? Is it an express or implied condition of your continued employment? Or do you just smoke a lot of weed and uncritically parrot what you read and hear in the corporate media?

@14: Wrong. Child poverty is higher in the U.S. than every country in the E.U. except Romania.

@ 16, Recently, there was a Slog poll asking who we preferrred, and something like 75% of readers chose Sanders. I'm fairly certain these articles are clickbait just to piss us off, though we can't rule out the possibility that Matt may be under the influence of a voodoo curse.

Hillary was for the TPP and fracking before she was against them. She voted for the Iraq war and pushed for the intervention in Libya--that didn't work out so well. She thinks women are the worst victims of war because it is so hard on them when their husbands, fathers, and sons are killed. She believes in a gender pay gap and a rape epidemic on campus. Or she claims to--I don't think she's an authentic feminist any more than she's an authentic anything else; she just poses as one because she found out it works with some people.

Question: if Hillary was attacked on the quality of her genitalia--e.g. about their size, condition of dryness or moistness, etc.--would she be allowed to respond, or would that count as bragging?

@14 (Dling57):

Jeez, where to start? Well, first of all, Bernie may call himself a "socialist" -- rebel chic? -- but in actuality he's nothing more than an FDR/LBJ-style social-democrat. He's about as socialist as Dwight Eisenhower was. Seriously, you should check out what real socialists have to say about him. (The Word Socialist Web Site and Counterpunch are good starting points, although Counterpunch has a healthy smattering of Bernie supporters amongst their writers.)

Yes, let's study the disaster social-democracy has wrought in Europe and elsewhere. How they live longer, healthier lives than we do. How they have greater social mobility than we do. How they work fewer hours, enjoying considerably longer paid vacations, and yet somehow still manage to have a higher median net worth than we do. (That median part is important -- no artificially inflating the net worth of average Joes and Janes by including the net worth of the super-rich in the calculation. Tell me: how exactly does a country bleed its middle-class citizens dry with punitive taxes and at the same time permit them to achieve a higher median net worth than ours?)

And that scary $1.4 trillion in revenue? Well, Switzerland is often cited as having the second most expensive healthcare system in the world (and as achieving the world's best outcomes, rivaled by Japan's). Switzerland spends around 12% of GDP on healthcare and we spend around 18%. If you could apply Switzerland's system to the US and its GDP, that represents a savings of around $1 trillion a year. And Switzerland's system is not as cost-effective as national single-payer. So, if we were to enact national single-payer health insurance, as Bernie claims to want to, that's maybe a trillion a year that could be tapped for other uses. (By economist Gerald Friedman's calculations, around 95% of us would end up with more cash in our pockets -- as well as dramatically better insurance -- than they do with the current healthcare system. Republicans like that, don't they? More money in their own pockets? Better insurance?)

And why the exclusive focus on federal taxes? Washington is the most regressively taxed state in the country. The bottom 20% pay over 17% of their incomes in state and local taxes, and the top 1% pay less than 3%. In fact, all states except Vermont have a regressive state and local tax structure. (Vermont's is more or less flat.) But even if you slant your argument by excluding state and local taxes, what about payroll tax? Everyone who works pays federal payroll tax, and federal revenue from payroll tax has grown to almost equal revenue from individual income tax (and to dwarf corporate tax) ... and federal payroll tax, being capped, is also regressive.

In point of fact, the US has close to the highest poverty rate in the OECD and we're only rivaled or surpassed by countries like Mexico, Turkey, Greece, and Israel (and guess who's factored into Israel's calculations). Where on earth did you get the idea that we had a lower poverty rate than social-democratic developed countries? What bubble have you been living in?

Finally, to follow up on Original Andrew's comment @ 15, no one is looking for a free ride -- just to stop being bled dry by predatory price-gouging (notably in healthcare and education) and regressive taxation, to stop having our jobs outsourced in a race to the bottom in labor and environmental standards, and to be given a fair shake in exchange for fair taxes. But that's probably too complicated for a Republican to understand, so let me reduce it to a single argument: after paying all of those horrible social-democratic taxes for stuff like healthcare and education, the median Australian, Frenchman, Italian, Briton, Japanese, Swiss, Finn, Norwegian, Singaporean, Canadian, Dutchman, New Zealander, Irishman, Spaniard, Dane, Taiwanese, Swede, and German is richer than the median American, and has more free time to enjoy life, to boot.

Reminder: The Democratic Party's unpledged, unelected superdelegates won't necessarily dance with the one what brung 'em. They didn't in 2008, when they dumped Hillary for Obama, and they won't necessarily this time 'round. A lot of them will be up for re-election themselves, and if Bernie is the popular choice in their own constituencies, it won't serve their own political futures very well to nominate a candidate their own voters have rejected. The calculation is especially easy for Democratic members of Congress. Much better to get re-elected by nominating Bernie and then go on to sabotage everything he wants from the safety of a congressional subcommittee. Think of the corporate gratitude! The revolving-door payoffs!

who changed my password???

Get off the stage, Shillary.

@ 21 @14
Please google the US poverty Vs poverty in Europe. Your Facts, yes I was looking for facts, are wrong.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015…
https://mises.org/blog/poor-us-are-riche…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/…

When you are done feel free to good what country spends the most on wealth fare. http://www.edwardconard.com/america-spen…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk…
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/42…

How can we already spend 25% more on wealthfare spending than the rest of the world before changing our model to something similar to the EU and expect a better result? The Eu is made up of a lot of different countries and different systems. You can't compare apples to oranges. But if you look at the EU vs the US we are flat out better. We make more money, and we have more.

Play the Bernie drinking game. Every time he says "free", you take a gulp of someone else's drink !

@25: Can you even read? Check out your own link to the Slate article, which states (with facts!) that "low-income Americans get an exceptionally raw deal for residents of the developed world."

Also, your links say nothing about child poverty. Here's what UNICEF has to say on the matter. The U.S. rank 34th on that list, below every country in the E.U. except Romania.

It's quite audacious to write this before our own state even has time to caucos! Or, was that the point? To instill in people's minds that Hillary is inevitable, don't worry about voting this time around. It's astonishing that The Stranger is participating in this sort bullshit. Or maybe not so considering all of your good writers left for better jobs years or months ago...

*caucus

@28 Now now Doug don't jump to insults. You obviously stopped reading. I asked you to google the info and find out for yourself. I only provided the first three article on my search. How fair would it be to only provide articles that proved my point. To be fair I provided what the search gave. If you kept reading you would find the counter argument. The other articles even reference your UNICEF study and argue against it. Median income is the stat they use. Look at the bigger picture.

We’re often told that to be poor in the US is much worse than being poor in the social democracies of Europe. And the bottom 10% in the US are indeed worse off than the bottom 10% in Sweden. But they’re better off than the bottom 10% in Germany or France: places where we are told that there is indeed that social democracy. If you only believe what you are told by your friends and a few articles without finding the truth you will be commenting blind. I only ask that you keep reading.

American inequality is very real, mostly because the wealthy have done very well. But, and a big but, All classes of Americans are better off then our counterparts when you look at the bigger picture. I'm not wealthy by any means. But I am grateful for what I have and I do not concern myself with being angry that someone has more than me. So what my car is from 1999 and I can't get a Mercedes. In some European countries my wife and I both having cars may not be an option. Most studies have found that the poor in America have more than the median income of some of the countries on your Unicef study that did better then the US.

So, Matt, you care more about a candidate's sex than their Moral stature? If so, then I recommend voting for either Alyson Kennedy of the Socialist Workers' Party ( Trotskyist, like Kshama's Socialist Alternative ), or Gloria La Riva of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, BECAUSE MOST OF THE BERN'S SUPPORTERS ARE NOT GOING TO VOTE FOR AN OLIGARCHIST!!! ( and they even have petitions to prove it, and they will be sent to that bitch DWS - the head of the Demolican Nazinal Conmittee and former Hitlery kampfpain head in 2008 . --- https://www.credomobilize.com/petitions/… & http://www.votepsl.org & http://www.themilitant.com/SWPCampaign20…

C'mon Matt unlatch your lips from Hillary's ass.. Take a deep breath and realize the Hillary you speak of was only a dream.. A fantasy... Too much red kool-aid... Try to de-program and eventually you'll feel safe enough to admit that you were wrong.. Don't worry President Trump wont let the Clintons have you killed..

Shame on you Stranger, my native local hip newspaper going for the establishment candidate? I never thought you would take this position. I'm disgusted and embarrassed for you.

Since when is Hillary the presumptive nominee? OMG! Don't you realize "the Bern" is highly contagious. Right now there is an outbreak of a few million of us. However in a few weeks it will become a full fledged epidemic.

Symptoms are people become filled with hope, feel love again, and have all our cherished Seattle progressive values of kindness and justice grow again. Better stay inside so you don't catch this with the rest of the population.

On Hillary all I will say is this. Money can sure buy a lot of things in life including endorsements, speeches, articles, and influence but it doesn't buy love or Bernie Sanders (who by the way is going to be our next president.)