The way it's gonna go this election

Bernie was appealing as an underdog fringe candidate before, and he remains appealing as one now. His win of California was by a tellingly small margin, given that there were half a dozen much more moderate-seeming candidates all splitting the vote.

California percentages and totals, via the Associated Press:

• Bernie Sanders - 34% - 1,479,551
• Joe Biden - 27% - 1,174,013
• Michael Bloomberg - 13.2% - 572,304
• Elizabeth Warren - 13.2% - 575,386
• Pete Buttigieg - 5.2% - 225,135
• Amy Klobuchar - 2.6% - 114,177

In California, you’re either a true believer and you Feel The Bern, or you’re not and you see the primary as a pointless choice between near equals.

The Democratic Party is determined not to shoot themselves in the foot like they did last time, and that means they care about the rust belt and how their nominee performs there more than ANY other factor. So it makes sense that so many competitors dropped out after "Super Tuesday." In fact, I'm willing to bet that the party management got together behind closed doors with all the candidates except Bernie and said this:

"If all of you stay in here, you're going to split the vote and Bernie will keep carrying the fringe. None of you will win, even though in a one-on-one with Bernie all of you would have a solid chance. So the way things are, Bernie will keep getting the largest small slice of the pie, and then the fringe candidate will go up against Trump the fringe candidate, and Trump is going to nail him to the wall in the rust belt, and every other state will vote along party lines and it'll be four more years of Trump."

"If we kick Bernie out of the race right now, after carrying California, the Democrat fringe will go completely bananas and burn us alive for seven long months. No candidate will survive that. We have to keep him in, and hope that he either grows in stature enough to carry the election - a total longshot - or gets whacked soundly in the rest of the primaries and his fringe calms down. But to make that happen he needs to face just one candidate, so the vote isn't split."

"So we're booting you. All of you, except Joe. We know there's that whole Burisma thing, and he's an old white guy, but the electoral college is what it is. If the Democratic party can't get people in Michigan out of their houses and into voting booths, we may as well not exist."

We'll get a taste of how this move will play out tomorrow.