At the very least, vote for someone, something, rather than just not vote at all. Not voting out of disgust is indistinguishable from not voting out of ignorance and/or apathy. Voting for Beyonce at least shows you're engaged... you're just deliberately rejecting the offered choices.

Good lord Bobby, why do you seem to be the only sensible person on the Internet? Thanks for this.

what IS This?? This race is FAR from over. Y'all are drinking some deep kool aid! Keep Calm, BERN ON. Many of us knew that 3/15 would be sad but Bernies best states lie ahead.

Military intervention is also guaranteed with a Clinton Presidency.
I'm with Harz.

Lol! Half the States haven't even had primaries yet (including the biggest ones) and you buffoons are already writing Bernie's obituary. Might want to wait until June 7th before blasting your fanfare of trumpets for Queen Hillary.

A thoughtful article, but it omits two essential facts. One is that if Clinton wins the primary your choices will not be limited to a Clinton/Trump contest. You can still vote Green. The Green Party candidate (probably Jill Stein) will almost certainly not win. But in the long run, voting your conscience is healthy for you and your country. Try it.

The second fact voters should understand (and the Merc should editorialize on) is that great political blobfish known as the electoral college. The EC assures that a handful of swing states will decide the outcome of the election. There are about 10 states that might swing this year - perhaps only seven or eight - and Merc readers in Oregon and Washington don't live in one. So voting for Clinton in Oregon is a pointless exercise in redundancy as the Democratic candidate is already assured of winning ALL votes in the state. That is, he or she will win all the votes that actually count - the electoral college votes. Since your individual vote literally does not count in a state with a known outcome, there's no imperative to waste it making some futile anti-Trump statement. On the other hand, if the Dems see a rising tide of Green, they might actually do a bit of soul searching and start responding to populist sentiments.

**This content provided to you by the DNC**

Wake up people, Sanders is doing exactly what he's done in Vermont throughout his whole career, but now on a national scale. He's the stooge keeping progressives from finally once and for all abandoning the façade that is today's Democratic party. Any sane Republicans should be doing the exact same thing on their side as well.

Thank you Red Diamond for the very valid points. Go Stein!

To see the effects of this thinking on a local level one only need go back four years to a election for county council when 30,000 people (mostly democrats) in Clark County refused to vote in an election between two republicans. The end result was that a very moderate republican Mark Boldt, who was the creator or Clark County's urban farming bill for instance, lost to David Madore who ran on a platform of stopping light rail and the I-5 bridge replacement. The end result will be an unknown number of years (10? 20?) in which traffic worsens in Portland and Vancouver, and a lost opportunity to decrease the cars on the road by connecting light rail across the river.

-erikwecks-

It's a bit hard to tell which side of the fence you sit from your comment. However, there are many "progressive" types who welcome the demise of the CRC (it's not dead yet folks, thanks to Kotek) regardless of how it came about. An optimist could almost consider it a political compromise. I fully support mass transit, but people aren't going to get out of their cars until it's no longer financially feasible to do so. Look at today, the middle-east is in flames and gas is under $3 per gallon. Building a larger bridge isn't going to affect that sad reality.

"So voting for Clinton in Oregon is a pointless exercise in redundancy as the Democratic candidate is already assured of winning ALL votes in the state."

Spoken like a true Ralph Nader supporter in 2000. Remember how voting for a 3rd party candidate turned out then?

As to the blog post. Neh, it is really another form of defeatism and takes for ganted that the more demanding progressives are uneducated whiny babies. Well, that's not so.
The points made are whistling in the dark.

A third party candidacy hasn't worked because none of those third parties were fueled by as much public support (financially, intellectually, and emotionally) as Bernie Sanders has should he decide to carry the revolution forward if he should not gain the Democratic Nomination.
Should he run a third party candidacy?
Well now, that's a question for the future and the people. There's more riding on this than keeping the status qua or handing the White House over to the biggest crackpot (Trump, Cruz, Clinton).

A new generation of voting Americans have been activated by the Sanders campaign. To force them to chose to support the Democratic party without Mr. Sanders, admidst all the obvious problems of Hillary Clinton, from a spotty political career, personal bad choices, and a kind of maniac detest of those who don't fall in line with her, would tell these new and rejuvinated older voters they no longer matter and were just part of the political game.
Will Mr. Sanders do that should he not gain the nomination?
I don't know. I, speaking as myself, hope not.

Not voting for Sanders because you presume Hillary to be the next presidential candidate from the Democratic party makes Hillary inevitable. Voting for Sanders and donating to his campaign will likely cause super delegates to flip to his side, and the media really doesn't want that. Keep feeling the Bern, Oregon!