So, the Democratic presidential primary contests are now nearly at “Super Tuesday.” Bernie Sanders narrowly lost in Iowa, won big in New Hampshire, lost by a clear margin in Nevada, and was blown out in South Carolina. To hear the mainstream news media going on in the way they have over the significance of South Carolina, one would think that it hadn’t been locked up for Hillary from the beginning, and that she hadn’t received endorsements from John Lewis and James Clyburn adding to her margins on the way to victory.

The mainstream media are again ready to write off the Sanders insurgency, because “the math,” they say, is now against the likelihood of Bernie’s success in the future. But they are mistaken in thinking that the contest is about “math.”

It is not! In the end, it is about the political legitimacy of the two candidates relative to one another and to the Republican candidate (at this moment still likely to be Donald Trump, in spite of the David Duke/KKK affair going on at this writing). On Tuesday March 1, Bernie Sanders will more than likely get swamped in contests throughout the South. He will win overwhelmingly In Vermont, and likely by lesser margins in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, and perhaps Oklahoma. Indeed, he may even win only 3 of these 5 states.

The media will react predictably. They will declare the primary contest over, and talk will begin in earnest about Bernie Sanders conceding the nomination and Democrats coming together to heal all wounds and present a united front to save the nation from the ravages of Donald Trump or one of the other Republican “extremists”.

Senator Sanders and his supporters must resist this pressure to submit, and must hang in for the long haul, because the alternative is a renewed and accelerated march towards plutocracy, and oligarchy, in the United States. Their resistance, in spite of the many thumbs, including the media, on the scale for Hillary, will not be futile.

Initially, the result of Super Tuesday will be to increase Hillary Clinton’s legitimacy relative to Senator Sanders’. However, there is reason to believe that this short term victory will be overcome by events, partly made more likely by her victories, and the reaction they will provoke in Donald Trump and others on the Republican side.

With Bernie’s relative legitimacy fading from view in the short term, Republican fire on Hillary Clinton will get much more intense after March 1st, and in the whole two week period leading up to March 15th. She will want to reply in kind, and the well-known Clinton modus operandi is that they never allow attacks on either of them to go unchallenged.

Usually, they win the ensuing propaganda fights. But whether they win or lose the one that is surely coming up, we know from previous history that it will drive up Hillary’s negatives among both Republicans and independents and that polling will reflect that.

Recently her unfavorables have been at 53%, by far the highest of any of the candidates, with the exception of Donald Trump. What will happen after 2 solid weeks of such attacks? Will they rise to 60%? Will they rise even higher? Will they continue to rise into the mid-60s, as she, and her surrogates, add further unfair or disingenuous attacks on Bernie Sanders? I think this is likely to happen as the campaign goes on.

Meanwhile, Senator Sanders and his agenda will continue to become better known, and once more primary contests occur in states, where southern African-American populations firmly committed to Hillary Clinton do not hold sway in Democratic primaries and caucuses, Bernie Sanders will have much more success in these contests, and the media will have to acknowledge that he is a threat to Hillary once again. At that point the national polls will begin to have an impact on state contests across the nation.

What happens if and when Hillary’s unfavorable to favorable ratio in the national polling reaches 2-1, while Bernie’s reaches 1-2? And what happens if Bernie polls 60-40 against Trump or another Republican nominee, while Hillary polls, say 45-55 against the same Republican candidate? Will Hillary Clinton still be able to maintain her legitimacy among super-delegates? Will anyone still think that she is at all electable? Or will other Democratic candidates for office, fearing their own political demise, suddenly stampede to Bernie with unprecedented rapidity?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. But the scenario I’ve outlined is a likely one. Students of previous elections can talk all they want to about previous statistics, performance, and primary and electoral history, as well as current delegate counts. And I agree that such things do have an impact on legitimacy perceptions in the short and long run, and are now working to benefit Hillary Clinton.

But, I don’t believe they can match the impact of the rise in negatives that will be coming her way over the coming weeks. And I believe that this predictable rise in her negatives will increase the likelihood that people will be turning to Bernie before too long. In short, the probabilities are now in Clinton’s favor, but likelihood, a very different thing, is, perhaps, not so clear a matter to discern quite yet.

Anyway, hang in there Bernie. You are the better general election candidate of the Democratic Party.

Compared to your opponent, you: have a far better economic and social justice agenda, attitudes toward foreign policy that are much more likely to maintain the peace, are viewed as more trustworthy, have a greater record of commitment and consistency over your long career to popular policy positions, are the only candidate on the Democratic side promising real change in the terrible trends toward increasing inequality and concentration of power in the hands of the few, and have fewer possible surprises that can derail your run for the presidency during the campaign.

In short, you are far more electable, and also far more desirable, as the next president of the United States than Hillary Clinton. The longer you hang in, the greater the likelihood that Democratic primary voters, and super-delegates will both come to accept that fact!