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Notes -
The Republican primaries are mostly winner-takes-all outside the early states, so a candidate with a plurality of the vote in a divided field can get a majority of the delegates and the nomination (this is also how McCain won the nomination in 2008). The Democratic primaries are proportional everywhere, so if a candidate is persistently getting a plurality but not a majority of the votes the Dems are headed for a brokered convention. Bernie was not doing well enough to win the nomination on delegate count, and had no plausible route to win it except a deal with Warren. (Either for her support in the primaries, or for her delegates at the convention)
The is the strategy Hilary Clinton used unsuccessfully against Obama in 2008, whereas Obama focussed on delegate counts all the way back to Iowa and New Hampshire. Bernie had the money, organisation, and name recognition to go all the way to the convention, as did whoever turned out to be the leading establishment candidate. He didn't need attention or endorsements - he needed delegates. And in proportional primaries he gets roughly the same number of delegates regardless of how the anti-Bernie vote is split.
It is not how Trump won 2016. By the start of 2016, it was obvious that (absent some kind of blow-up) Trump, Cruz, and Rubio all had the resources and support to go to the convention, and Cruz and Rubio didn't drop out until they were mathematically eliminated. Once winner-take-all primaries started, Trump was consistently winning 2/3 or more of the delegates available each week. Cruz and Rubio didn't do a deal to stop Trump because they hated each other as much as they hated Trump, and in any case it is unlikely either of them could have delivered enough votes with an endorsement to let the other beat Trump. Trump because his narrow pluralities in winner-take-all states got him delegates, not because they got him headlines.
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