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It was in florida, mainiac. No one remembers that. Especially the people involved.

Man, you must have a lot of confidence that trump will take a massive dump on the constitution and our legal system if he gets elected...

How will you detect rigging if you don't have observers?

Normally? It's not like these things are particularly closed door, most of the time. They're generally, y'know. Televised live, from multiple angles and often illicitly, too, these days. Actual ground vote stuff is generally handled by the local election whatsit folks, too, rather than specifically chosen members of the party.

There usually isn't specific election monitors (for the primaries, at least... think they get a bit more involved in the general, but there's a fair amount of opposition to them in the US, so...), but there is still a lot of folks involved, many of which don't really have much reason to rig things and even less to keep mum if they notice it happening. Makes it relatively difficult to get away with stuff. Not impossible, but about as good as you'll get without actually having specific organizations dedicated to keeping an eye on that thing (more, since it's not like there's no interaction at all) involved. And even that doesn't exactly remove the possibility of some sort of corruption. Just adds another layer of people that'd need to be subverted. Which is kinda' desirable, because the more effort it is the less likely someone's going to invest that effort into it, but still. It's not like the folks involved with this actually particularly need to rig the votes to get the outcomes the party's pretty happy with.

Where are the election monitors?

... do the parties even have those for their primaries? Any of them, really, not just the big two. Certainly can't recall hearing of any for the last... well, as long as I've been alive and aware. Occasionally ones during actual votes or at particular polling areas or something, but not at conventions or whathaveyou. It'd be a bit weird, anyway... these things are an internal organizational issue, not some aspect of the actual government.

You know, maybe Sanders made the right decision by not conceding the primary until the very end. He managed to push forward nearly all of his platform stuff, including stuff that was outright declared by some people as "delusional", like 15$ minimum wage, alongside with breaking up big banks and free public university education.

It sure seems that he didn't lose any political influence by not quitting early. In fact, he may have had much more influence than he would have had otherwise. This is certainly a historical decision on his part, one that may be followed by many more candidates in the future.

... just about every appearance is that he lost a lot of political influence by not quitting earlier, as well as not handling things during the primary a (fair) bit more adroitly. Those things you mentioned as pushing forward were things clinton was already intending to push towards, just not quite as rapidly (because, y'know, then it'd be easier to actually get some shit done in a single term) on some fronts. 13-and-a-bit minimum wage, a massive expansion of free uni education for everyone below a certain (pretty damn high) income, etc., etc., etc. Was all shit that was already on the table. In exchange for "concessions" that were basically already happening, he's hurt the chances of a liberal president (and by extension SCOTUS position), lost pretty much any chance of influencing any major cabinet etc. positions, and mostly pissed off many of the people that's basically been trying to do the same goddamn thing he was.

He's maybe expanded his personal voting base to a degree (but not as much as he could have, because as I've noted this shit has alienated some of his previous support base) and managed to convince people to try to do some stuff that's probably goddamn stupid on a practical level, and in exchange did a lot of bridge burning with people that not just could have been allies towards the things he's try to get, but were (and still are, but you can pretty much guarantee it's not going to be so in tandem with sanders very much at this point), and generally turned a fair chunk of people that already weren't largely against his rhetoric style and whatnot.

Basically any gains you're seeing are significantly smaller than they probably could have been, and some have quite possibly turned things that could have been victories outright for his platform into pyhrric ones at best. A number of the decisions he's made, particularly near the end of the primary, have been frankly fucking stupid, particularly on any level that isn't kinda' distasteful (i.e. not egotism or personal gain or whatev').

And seriously, I say all this as someone that came into this primary pretty damn supportive of the guy, and was kinda' trying to stay positive on the man for most of the primary. I've really wanted to support someone as verbally (if not functionally) left-wing as he is. But dude done fucked up. My opinion of him as a political operator is now pretty much nil, and the impression of character he was giving before has been eroded to hell.

Saving it for the next round :V

Alternately he didn't actually want to. Have you seen what happens to US presidents? It may be 4-8 years (or less), but it shaves a hell of a lot more off their lifespan than that, by all appearances.

Or rather, it's fairly easy but usually not particularly pleasing to read, for a human. Odd logical patterns are easy. Ones that don't lead the reader to howl murderous invective about idiot balls or whatev' is the problem :V

I'm not exactly sure how we'd do proportional representation for presidential candidates, but I would support surgically removing 43.1% of Hillary Clinton's body and grafting the equivalent amount of Bernie Sanders onto her.

Maybe time share? They split the weeks or somethin', or just the overall term.