The second issue is the platform. Clinton will surely make massive concessions to keep the Sanders people on board. Even more important than the platform is what commitments Clinton will make regarding presidential appointees.

Elizabeth Warren, who has not endorsed either Sanders or Clinton, has been putting pressure on Clinton to commit to avoid naming the usual Wall Street suspects to senior economic posts. “Personnel is policy,” Warren likes to say.

Warren has positioned herself to broker unity between the Clinton and Sanders factions of the Democratic Party, and my guess is that she will succeed. Sanders wins surprisingly broad support in part because people discern that he is a mensch — a stand-up guy.

Even if he loses the nomination, I can’t believe that Sanders will go away and sulk, or urge his supporters to do likewise. He and his people, in exchange for supporting the ticket with enthusiasm, could have a lot of influence in the next Democratic administration and in succeeding ones.

How much influence? Michael Lind, writing in the New York Times Sunday Review, contends that “Trumpism and Clintonism are the future” of the two respective parties.