It’s almost enough to make you feel a little bit sorry for Hillary Clinton. By all accounts, she is cleaning Bernie Sanders’ clock in the Democratic Primary. She’s getting almost 60% of the popular vote and is beating Bernie by millions and millions of votes. She’s furthermore well on track to secure the nomination via delegates. Bernie Sanders has lost, and it’s not because of chicanery, it’s because Hillary has kicked his butt with the voters.

However, concepts like “Hillary deserves to win because she has performed better” are completely alien to Bernie Sanders and his supporters, whose political and moral beliefs dictate that Bernie should get just as many delegates as Hillary because he’s tried really hard. Surely, anyone who tries really hard and still doesn’t succeed must be the victim of some nefarious plot by an entrenched power structure somewhere, right?

Hillary and her party have coddled these socialist/communist impulses for decades, and at this point they can’t really speak out against them at the risk of alienating their own voters by pointing out what spoiled children they are. So it’s left to Hillary to seethe in private:

Fury against Bernie Sanders is growing in Clinton World.

In public, Hillary Clinton‘s aides and allies have kept their anger checked, decrying the rowdy outbursts at Nevada’s state convention last weekend but saying they believe Sanders will ultimately do the right thing by helping to unite the Democratic Party.

Behind the scenes, however, they are seething that statements by the Vermont senator are just making matters worse by further alienating his supporters from Clinton, the front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination.

The continued combat on the left is also complicating Clinton’s efforts to fully turn her attention to presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who is reveling in the Democratic feuding.

“This is the worst-case scenario and the one people feared the most,” said one Clinton ally and former Clinton aide.

In retrospect, I’m sure the Democrats are regretting allowing Sanders – who is not a Democrat – to participate in their primary in the first place. They should have told him that he could either join the party officially or run on his own ticket. But they thought his campaign would be cute and charming and not really attract much attention but instead fold new socialists into the Democratic party fold.

Instead, they have found that the Sanders campaign has splintered their party and any attempt to inject actual reason into the discussion will only push out voters they desperately need against Trump. Lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas, Democrats.