Why Platner's implosion won't singe the Sanders wing

For 21 hours, while Bernie Sanders said nothing about the sexual assault allegation destroying Graham Platner's campaign, speculation grew that the Vermont senator might be trying to talk his ally out of Maine's Senate race.

Sanders helped write the Platner story, after all, so he could close the book. It sounded good, but this story — and Sanders' entire movement — doesn't work that way.

The founding myth of the Sanders camp, now entering its second decade at the arguable peak of its power as a left-wing electoral force, is that it sits outside the Democratic Party. Sanders can style himself that way because he never won the presidential primary.