Of course, there are plenty of people arguing here at DailyKos.com that "Bernie can't win." The problem with some of their arguments is that they aren't based on a whole lot, and so, after some discussion, you discover that they're for some other candidate! For the most part, as you may have guessed, they're for Clinton; some are no doubt for O'Malley; others are waiting for a possible Biden candidacy that has so far received the President's blessing.
Now, at the beginning of this month I posted a diary on the "left-identifying critics of Sanders' candidacy." Their main point appeared to be that Sanders was basically someone to cheer up the party liberals and keep them in the Democratic Party fold before his campaign failed and the Democratic Party would ask everyone to vote for Clinton. The authors I showcased presented arguments of a wholly different caliber than that of "I'm just arguing that Bernie can't win because I support someone else."
I also identified two main problems with this argument: 1) is there really an alternative to the "Democratic Party fold" out there, that would motivate anyone to leave it? and 2) Sanders' own argument, as he himself argues:
Our job is to make a political revolution. Our job is to educate and organize so that working people fight for their rights and for their dignity - and are actively participating in the political process. Sanders actually makes a stronger statement to the effect that the status quo will not elect him President. Here it is, in the Christian Science Monitor online: I do not believe that any president who’s standing up for the working class of this country can be successful without a mobilized, activist, grass-roots movement behind him or her. A "grass-roots movement" is what Sanders' candidacy is predicated upon. Is Sanders' "movement" merely out there for the sake of "sheepdogging" its participants? As I suggested in my diary, the historical record does not look good, but, even so, it's still too early to tell.That diary focused on "left" reasons to dismiss the Sanders candidacy; this diary will focus upon authors who attempt to calculate the chances of a Sanders candidacy succeeding in attaining the Democratic Party Presidential nomination. These arguments do not start from partisan, or for that matter from anti-partisan, perspectives. They do, however, attempt to "calculate" the future; in this regard one recalls the imaginary science of "psychohistory" in Isaac Asimov's (1951) (1952) (1953) "Foundation trilogy."