To the Clinton campaign, Bernie Sanders must have seemed the perfect opponent, at least in the beginning.  A congenial straw man, a certain loser, sweet old Soviet-era Bernie offered the pretense of a race without the risk.  Then he almost mucked it up.  Not even God saw that coming.  But despite moments of panic as Bernie outperformed expectations, there never was any real danger he’d go completely rogue and try to dethrone Hillary.  No way the establishment was being Trumped on this one.

To his supporters, Bernie was the antidote to the establishment, an anti-Hillary, a new voice in an old body.  It seemed as if he told the truth, and you can’t get any more anti-Hillary than that.  No doubt he was the better candidate.  Hillary is a card-carrying member of the global kleptocracy, a scandal-ridden, big-money establishment crony who’s spent her entire life courting power and favors from the privileged One-Percenters.  To top it off, she’s one of the least likable, most untrusted, and most divisive candidates in American history.  

But was Bernie really all that truthful?  Did this long declared independent, a party outsider who was permitted temporary Democratic affiliation for the primaries, have a deal with the bosses, understood if not stated?  Obviously, he had no intention of giving it his all, and he knew that the party had no intention of letting him win.

Now that his race is officially run, his campaign can be summarized succinctly: he called for revolution and surrendered immediately.  He didn’t want to talk about the scandals, the lies, the money, Benghazi, the foundation, Clinton’s unexceptional record, or her own private war on women.  Absolutely no talk about Bill.  He would mention Wall Street, but ever so mildly.

Most famously, he’d heard enough about the emails, making a genuinely sycophantic capitulation early on that should have ended his nascent candidacy then and there.  (And the FBI report proved he was wrong to so flippantly absolve Clinton of wrongdoing.)  Not even when the race looked unexpectedly viable would Bernie play the cards in his hand.  Like Mitt Romney in 2012, he'd fight only so hard.  His supporters were anti-establishment, not Bernie.  He'd made a comfortable career inside it, after all.

In this charade, Sanders was the only winner.  After a career in obscurity, he had his moment in the sun.  Now that he’s endorsed Clinton, he’ll no doubt get some face time at the convention.  He fought the good fight, if by that one means he pulled his punches for the establishment, caused no major damage to its candidate, and took the inevitable, if somewhat belated, dive.

For his backers, they now go from true believers in change to lackeys of the rich ruling class.  If you believe what Bernie says he does, then supporting Hillary is nothing short of soul-destroying hypocrisy.  Completely beholden to Wall Street, she is the very embodiment of the corruption destroying our government and politics.  Now go and vote for her, you revolutionaries, you.