Forget Villanova – the biggest winners in basketball are, and always will be, the Harlem Globetrotters.  Definitive statistics are elusive, but the latest ESPN tally I found has the Harlem Globetrotters beating their longtime rivals, the Washington Generals, 13,994 times out of their last 14,000 games.

Perhaps Bernie Sanders will soon be made aware of this – the theatrical presentation of a competitive sport – and better understand the role the DNC and Clinton forces have in mind for him, the venerable liberal malcontent far in left field: unthreatening, entertaining, certain to lose.

You see, the Globetrotters and Generals have what is widely understood as an "arrangement."

As the summer months of 2015 passed, the DNC and the Clinton campaign must have been delighted in the success of their use of threats; stolen FBI files; and, surely, shady back-room money deals to prevent any potential roadblock to the 2016 Hillary coronation.  Think of it: the Republicans draw seventeen candidates.  The Democrats show stunning and historical disinterest.  For an entire party of political hacks, zealots, and career politicians to be persuaded not to run for president in 2016, including a sitting vice president, shows raw political power at its most fearsome.  Clinton and her allies managed to convince hundreds of senators, governors, and representatives, all with great personal and political ambition, to sit this one out, an amazing feat of political intimidation.

To keep appearances somewhat credible, Clinton and her team knew they had to have someone to run against to keep the charade viable.  Her cheerleaders in the main-stream media would faithfully provide cover from any rogue legitimate candidates, like Virginia senator Jim Webb, by totally ignoring them and providing zero coverage.  Yet an empty Soviet-style ballot would look too fishy.  The ideal patsy?  How about the elderly Jewish socialist senator from Vermont with a Brooklyn accent and crazy ideas?  Perfect!  Bernie Sanders.  And he isn't even a registered Democrat!

Ridiculous?  Maybe.  But why take chances?  The die was cast.  No more Obama-like surprises.

So the chosen one, the First Woman President, triumphantly hits the trail...and then stumbles and hides and refuses to take questions and lies and obfuscates.  And then, amazingly, she loses New Hampshire.  And then she loses again – not to a young African-American Charismatic Agent of Change, but to old, confused, and diffident Bernie the Socialist, in state after state, now six out of the last seven.

And he takes it easy on her.  He doesn't even bother to attack her lying, sordid, probably felonious past.  He refuses to bring up an FBI investigation into her criminal email conspiracies.  He pulls punches regarding her longstanding and corrupt relationship with Wall Street.  He ignores her terrible and disastrous mishandling of Libya, Egypt, and Russia as secretary of state.  And yet he beats her to the point that the New York primary, of all things, has become crucial to her chances. 

To further compound the humiliation, Sanders inexplicably becomes a celebrity hero to the young.  Even for a woman comfortable with indignities and the disappointments and “the pangs of disprized love” – what a pill to swallow!  The seventy-four-year-old coot is now rocking the house!

In the few losses recorded by the Globetrotters, one will find that the cause was an overly scrupulous or absent-minded time-keeper who mistakenly let the clock run out prematurely.  The nominating convention clock ticks away, and Bernie stubbornly pushes on.  Most likely, Clinton will get word to Sanders about a suitable accommodation and avoid further embarrassment.  With the superdelegate farce, the media disinterest, and the entire party establishment in the bag, Hillary will surely win the nomination.

But while Hillary has been fortunate to have the Republicans, and especially Trump, dominate the news cycle as her foundering campaign loses voters and yet gains delegates, the fiasco grows daily as Bernie exposes more and more of her liabilities and weaknesses.  Sanders has already done the country a service by casting the spotlight on the corrupt and lamentable charade of Clinton's coronation.  He has exposed something as certain as a Globetrotter victory, and that is the fact that as a candidate, Clinton is awful.