system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Bernie Sanders is not harming the Democratic Party or Hillary Clinton by staying in the race.

Full disclosure: I am a Bernie Sanders supporter. But I also will become a Hillary supporter once the convention is over. She's not the devil and in fact there's a lot to respect, especially if you actually are supporting Sanders for ideological reasons. But anyway, lots of people have been recently calling for Sanders to drop out now that his victory is all but mathematically impossible. But obviously that's not the only facet of the argument; otherwise they would have no basis for calling him to drop out. What they say is that Sanders staying in the race is preventing Democratic unity and keeping Clinton from making her general election pivot to Trump, who is now been focusing all his attention on Hillary as the Republican Party unites around him. The results of this, in the eyes of the Clintonites, are Hillary's troubling polling against Trump nationally and in battleground states. In both cases she is even losing, and when she's not the margin is razor thin most of the time. According to the Sanders detractors, this is the obvious result of Trump having a unified party while Clinton is still engaged in a grueling (despite wining by a landslide in all metrics) nomination battle. There are several flaws with this argument.

First of all, Clinton vs. Trump polling has always been close, it's just that now people are paying attention since it's closer to the general and these two are the presumptive nominees. Even as Sanders praised Secretary Clinton and communicated to America how little he cares about her damn emails, Trump vs. Sanders was always a blowout compared to Trump vs. Clinton. That's because it has nothing to do with the state of the Democratic race, but with the candidates themselves. Hillary Clinton is simply a weaker candidate: she is more disliked and mistrusted than Sanders, and she has a whole lot of baggage with her. Yes, she is more ideologically appealing to independents, but the rise of Trump shows that ideology isn't necessarily the biggest factor when it comes to who you vote for. And that's not even mentioning the fact that Sanders does better with independents than Clinton.

The second flaw is that Democratic unity isn't even threatened. The Democratic party has spent the last four months voting for a candidate, and that candidate is the inevitable nominee. And the entire party leadership is behind her as well. Yes, Sanders voters are a sizeable chunk of the party, but most of them will go to Clinton once she is nominated. The Bernie or Bust movement is a vocal minority, that's it.

Let me conclude by comparing this primary to 2008. That election was much more divisive. It was a much closer race and the Democratic establishment was essentially split on it. It was also nastier in tone, and also slugged on until the convention even as the loser had no chance of winning. There was also a presumptive Republican nominee (with *much* more support from his party and from the American people) who was in general election mode and attacking a divided Democratic field, lowering poll numbers for the eventual nominee. How did that one end? The loser endorsed the winner, brought over their supporters, and gave the Democrats an electoral landslide.
gpt
Of course he's hurting Clinton. Continuing to drag out a primary while the other side gets to circle the wagons is *de facto* hurting her.

General Election polling at this point is so inaccurate as to be entirely worthless. Using that as a substantive part of your argument does you no favors. Especially when using it to declare Clinton a "weaker candidate", which, by the way, has nothing to do with your CMV - that's just you on a soap box. 

But, since you brought it up - Sanders lost the popular vote to Clinton. He didn't have the election stolen from him. Sanders is an old hippie jew from from Brooklyn. There are huge swathes of the middle of the road that don't want to vote for Sanders and his desires to see kids get their loans paid off. 

But, again, that's neither here nor there. 

No one is all that concerned about party unity. It'll get it's shit together once the convention is over. 

The bigger problem now is Clinton cannot devote energy and money to pushing back on Trump, who gets weeks of shouting at the rain unanswered, because Clinton still has to put up a show in NJ and California - even though she's going to win those states handily. 

When she finally does move into 1:1 mode, she's instantly in defensive. She has to spend cycle after cycle walking back whatever nonsense Trump was throwing at the wall. 

And really, the biggest issue with Sanders right now is that he's wasting time and money to put up a stink. He knows he can't win. He's just trying to "make a point". But everyone has already picked their candidate. He's not going to change any more minds. 

All he's doing is irritating the electorate and frustrating the leadership. He's going to try and make the convention contentious just because he can. When the correct play would be to have congratulated his opponent for a hard fight and secured a position at the convention to speak his mind without having to worry about a rumble between his disaffected college kids and Hillary's blue collar base.