Now that Sanders has won a substantial number of delegates, is likely to win more, will sway some super-delegates, and stay in to the end, he’s getting more than a “seat at the table”.  He’s turning down the classic bargain:  gracefully drop out of the race, endorse the front-runner so s/he can rest up and get the balloon count right, in return for which the loser gets to make a speech and bask in cabinet appointment rumors.  One of the joys of voting for a cranky independent who’s too old (or even principled) to give a pizza rat’s slice about getting an appointment or a law firm job is watching him say “nope, you got nothing to make me stop, sorry, IMNA just keep exercising my right to win votes.  You’ll just have to staff out the balloon drop.  I’ll see you at the convention while you do that weird thing where you point at people in the crowd and smile and gesture and what not.”  Watching that happen will be pretty fun.

But the real joy is that Sanders is likely going to Philadelphia with a huge number of delegates, huge enough in fact to change not only the platform, but maybe, just maybe  . . . the rules of the nominating process.

The word revolution gets thrown around a lot.  Reagan staged one apparently, Bernie says he wants one.  When John Hodgman endorsed HRC, he made the case for incrementalism as a form of revolution, suggesting the only other kind involved barricades, blood, and guns.  I never took Sanders’s use of the word too literally, just that he was going to advocate fundamentally changing some things:  the financial system, money in politics, economic security as a right (not just a fortunate outcome of the free market) and . . . well, just that.

As Hodgman shows, when you get to the stage when you need pesky opponents to drop out, “revolution” is a word that lets you mock and belittle someone while appearing gentlemanly and sophisticated.  (Hodgman:  “Unless you want to have a REAL revolution, with shooting and stuff. You might. I do not.” Pity the Bernie Bro who wants to unpack and win that argument point for point.)

But here’s how the Sanders “revolution” is shaping up:  a cranky old man from a politically meaningless state builds (on) a movement, raises tons of money from human beings lacking in celebrity or power, proves that national campaigns can be successful without PACs, forces a major party to reckon with issues they’ve strategically ignored, and changes the rules to make the nomination process truly democratic and money-free.

Not the French, Russian, Chinese or American revolution.  Maybe not a revolution at all.  But it might just be revolutionary.