What we might expect this evening

Probably more scenes like this one.  This is SNL territory.  To the action.

Six states are going to the polls on the Democratic side, with a total of 694 delegates at stake. The most important of them by far is California, which has 475 of those delegates and where polls close at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. The second-biggest prize is New Jersey, where 126 delegates are at stake; polls close at 8 pm Eastern.

The other four states to vote are New Mexico (34 delegates, polls close at 7 pm local time), Montana (21 delegates, polls close at 8 pm local time), South Dakota (20 delegates, polls close at 7 pm local time), and North Dakota (18 delegates, caucuses begin 7 pm local time). And technically there's one more contest after this — the District of Columbia Democratic primary is a week from today, on June 14.

Now, the race in California appears tight — Sanders hasn't led a single poll of the state, but he trails by just 4 percentage points in the HuffPost Pollster average. By contrast, New Jersey looks like a blowout for Clinton, and the other (small) states have scarcely been polled.

As reported here two weeks ago, they'll call it -- for real this time -- after the Garden State stops voting at 7 p.m. our time.

Yes, the big question is what Sanders and his supporters do next.

In recent days, the Vermont senator has maintained that if this is the outcome, he'll stay in the race until the convention — and spend the next month and a half lobbying superdelegates to abandon Clinton and support him instead. And his campaign spokesperson Michael Briggs reiterated that sentiment last night, saying in a statement, "Our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump."

[...]

There is reason to be skeptical of Sanders's pronouncements, though. Presidential candidates have often argued that they'll fight all the way until the convention, only to reverse course when defeat is finally unmistakable. And Matt Yglesias argues that Sanders will likely do the same.

Whatever Sanders's intentions, the Democratic Party is eager for Hillary Clinton to move on to the general election and focus on taking on Donald Trump. Indeed, according to recent reports from the New York Times and CNN, several key Democratic figures who have remained neutral so far, like President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, will likely endorse Clinton in the coming days, as an effort to signal to Sanders that it's time to throw in the towel.

Gadfly is skeptical (shock me!) but there will be some significant amount of support lost from the Democrats in the days to come.  It depends, of course, on what the definition of the word 'significant' means.  Where the bulk of the defections land -- Trump, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, or NOTA -- is perhaps the more interesting question.

Stein will be appearing on Truthdig's Facebook Live this evening.

“I used to practice clinical medicine, taking care of patients,” (Stein) said in an interview with Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer. “Now I practice political medicine, because it’s the mother of all illnesses.”

Stein will be in the Truthdig offices Tuesday evening for a “Facebook Live” discussion on the final state presidential primaries, including California’s, which will be a deciding factor in the presidential race.

In a country dominated by a two-party political system, Stein wants people to know that the Green Party’s platform is not “radical” in the typical sense. “[W]e reflect the solutions that people are hungering for, and we actually have quite a bit of experience on the ground at the local and the county level making this happen,” she told Scheer.

Stein has been making media waves, with some hoping for a potential third-party ticket with Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders. She has clear progressive policy stances and recently noted in Rolling Stone that her platform is better for women than Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s.

[...]

Amid fears that Tuesday’s primary will be the end of Sanders’ campaign, Stein is certain that she could be a viable candidate for his supporters. “The whole reason for having an independent third party that cannot be silenced is [that] there are 25 percent of Bernie’s voters who are not going into that dark night to vote for the No. 1 cheerleader for Wal-Mart, for Wall Street, for an endless war,” Stein told Truthdig’s Bill Boyarsky. “They are looking for another place to hang their hat.”

If you're in Houston in early August, come meet Jill Stein at the USGP's presidential nominating convention, being held at U of H.  The convention's theme is "Houston, we have a solution".