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No, that's exactly what I'm pushing against. I mean, not that the DNC was against Bernie - it obviously was. But that his failure was due to the DNC's interference.
The simple fact of the matter is that Bernie was not known or popular enough at the time, and especially not compared to Clinton. We all despise Clinton now for a variety of legitimate reasons, but coming out of the Obama administration, she was pushing 65%+ approval ratings before she actually had to campaign and start talking to us hoi polloi, and had been setting the stage for a presidential run for a decade.
Bernie's campaign was a mess at the start, because he pretty clearly was running to get his views more traction, and was surprised as anyone when he skyrocketed in popularity. He had to build a run from the ground-up, and that's not really comparable to years of preparation. Clinton had more name recognition, more experience dealing with national political media, and appeal to a more moderate Democratic constituency in 2016 than that has developed since. Things in 2016 were not, and definitely did not feel as, fundamentally fucked that drove the normally right-wing American electorate to something vaguely resembling a center-left position. People forget, or gloss over, the changes in the political environment since.
It was not in the cards. We all want to believe it could have happened, but the fact is that the only 'what-if' scenarios where Bernie wins in 2016 are radical changes, and not just "The DNC steps back and lets things take their course".
Thank you for pushing back against the highlighted narrative. I remember it well, and there was a lot of noise for Bernie online and crickets at the polls.
I was all-in for Bernie, but there's often a difference between what we want and what is happening. It was honestly a miracle that Bernie ended as well as he did in 2016.
Now, 2020? 2020 we had a shot, but we were out-politiked. Not illegitimate, since politics inherently involves politiking, but I am salty about that still.
I think that’s all very reasonable and well-put. That said, I wanna give a little push-back, mainly bc superdelegates.
Sanders lost overwhelmingly on superdelegates, and the difference in number of delegates awarded to each candidate would have been less than half as big if superdelegates weren’t considered (IMO superdelegates were and are stupid).
Also, I recall that for most of the primary, Sanders was usually leading in pledged delegates, but was always behind on total number of delegates due to superdelegates.
I think Hillary got a large upswing of normal voters by the end of the primary bc she was in the lead, voters saw the writing on the wall, and they wanted to make her victory decisive. But I think voting for Bernie would’ve been more palatable if he was the one who constantly looked to be in the lead.
Of course, that’s just speculation. And given that Sanders only got 43.2% of the popular vote (though tbf that doesn’t include lowa/Maine/Nevada/North Dakota/Washington/Wyoming [source] )…yeah, it’s reasonable to say we needed more change than just the DNC stepping back.
Losing by less is still losing. And the superdelegates have always just been a sneaky way to run up the numbers. They switched to Obama when he won more delegates to make it look like the party is united behind its nominee. We can't know for sure they'd have done that with Bernie, but that's because he didn't get more pledged delegates.
This was never true, just more of the misinformation that was rampant in the Bernie political spaces. Clinton won most of the early states, and where Bernie won was usually not by much while Clinton had some southern blowouts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries