He shouldn't be required to endorse anyone, and with all the money his backers gave him, you'd think he would be able to do an independent run. Also it's not just a two party race, his views are similar to that of Jill Stein, he could have easily endorsed her and with his support behind him he could have given a 3rd party and nice bump.
He's not, which was the point I was trying to make a couple of weeks ago, when, it seemed to me at least, the option of supporting no one didn't seem to be on the table.
Who said anything about him being required to endorse anyone? It's question of pragmatism.
The realist in him surely knows that running independently or endorsing Stein would both only serve to harm Clinton and benefit Trump.
He sees that there are only two feasible outcomes: Clinton or Trump. He's doing what he can to make sure the one he prefers is the one that happens.
Pragmatism is simply code for
"He has to pick one so make the most pragmatic choice". In other words, he has to support someone.
Which he doesn't. Pragmatism is also code for,
"I would never vote for this person on principle, but the other choice is so evil I'm going to recommend her anyway". To me, his integrity is out the window at that point. This is the problem, in a nutshell, with the system. Integrity ends when the politicking begins. He would have done the system and his own causes a lot of good if he simply said,
"I can't endorse either one because they both represent all that I abhor about the system, they are simply two sides of the same coin and one is worse than the other, but I cannot, in good conscience, tell you to vote for someone I would not vote for personally. Vote your conscience, do what you think is best, you may have to decide which is the lesser of two evils but the choice is yours to make" I can't see any reason why any significant number of Bernie supporters would vote for Trump under any circumstance anyway, so taking that kind of position would be unlikely to affect the outcome IMO. He could have then stood outside the process, alone on the high road, just him and his integrity, and pointed out all the good things he thought about Hillary and her positions, throw in a bad thing here or there just to keep it real, all the while shredding Trump and his positions just the same. Integrity intact, a voice of reason for the downtrodden, left wing 99%'ers. Cut, print.
I suspect I'd be very popular among Bernie Supporters as one of his advisors. I'm guessing that when he started calling Trump a bigot and racist, the crowd would turn in his favour and they didn't cheer, they continue booing and eventually chanted
"We want Bernie". What I think they really mean is,
"We want the old Bernie back that had integrity", but that makes for an awkward chant

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