The front page table in today’s St. Albans Messenger tells it all: Bernie Sanders is the best candidate the Democrats can field in the general election.

As one of the most conservative counties in Vermont, Franklin County is a pretty good place to consider in an up-close examination of the primary results.

According to today’s table, here is how things shook out:

Donald Trump got a total of 1,782 votes.

Hillary got a total of 888 votes in all municipalities, roughly half of Trump’s total.

Of the other Republicans, only Ted Cruz got less votes than Hillary, at 508.

Bernie got a total of 7,060 votes!!  That is six times Trump’s total.

Bernie got more votes than all of the others together!

When voters really get to know Bernie, they are overwhelmingly drawn to his message.  For months now, Bernie’s strength against all of the Republicans (and Hillary’s relative weakness) has consistently shown up in all the polls.

Primaries are relatively poor tests of ultimate match-ups.

As we discovered in 2008, the super delegates are party loyalists above all.  When they began to see the groundswell of support for Obama toward the end of the primary season, they didn’t hesitate to throw-over Hillary for Obama.   I have to believe that they will eventually come around to recognizing where their best hope of winning lies.

Otherwise, we are in deep doo-doo.