Could Bernie have won, or was it over before it even started?
It's a tough question, but I'm leaning towards the latter. I just don't think Bernie had the breadth of experience and knowledge to every beat Hillary, and also his politics are too far left for a party that strongly approves of Obama's job as president.
There were certainly mistakes that Bernie made. His tone-deafness on race, his failure to come up with any foreign policy outlook. And the fact that when he finally gave some detailed policy proposals, they were based on Madoff-esque accounting.
On the other hand, if Bernie hadn't made those mistakes, and made this a closer race, then Hillary would have dropped her kid-gloves approach and done a more forceful job of pointing out his glaring weaknesses. Part of the reason it's as even close as it is is that she ran a positive campaign, with her eyes on the general, and just basically let Bernie do his thing.
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I suspect they are still polling states that have already completed primaries/caucuses. You should just focus on the upcoming states. Some look good for Bernie but most are going to go for Hillary or simply a draw which is really all Hillary needs at this point.
Bernie needs blowout wins to catch up. Splitting delegates isnt good enough.
And the Democrats and Republicans are moving further to the left-right respectively overall.
So, I think Bernie is the right candidate for this time.
The exit polls this cycle also show a huge increase in Democrats identifying as "liberal".
These are all good signs (well, the increasing polarization is worrisome), if Bernie was younger, more well-spoken, more appealing to look at, who knows what this primary would look like?
.... calling for a primary of Obama, followed by three plus years complaining about Obama, had instead put their time and effort into building up a set of sufficiently liberal candidates for 2016.
If Bernie just loses black voters by 60-40 or even 70-30 instead of 80-20 or 90-10 in some areas (60-40 nationally means he's losing the Southern states by "only" 10-20 points, winning the Rust Belt states seeing 70-30 won him Michigan, and is probably no more than 100 delegates behind at this point), he's easily within striking distance. That's just ONE factor. I bet you the John Lewis shit probably lost him this primary. If not that, then the Reddit/4chan-tier BernieBro shit which so many Sanders' supporters refuse to admit is a thing. That alone probably lost him 3-5% points with POC nationally.
I think Hillary was somewhat vulnerable on the issue despite her decades of outreach and presence (because of the 90s shit and the Obama campaign), but it needed a more refined and sensitive approach to get headway, not the massive butthurt and desperate pandering that the campaign and (moreso) the supporters did, and definitely not the butthurt borderline-Trumpian dogwhistle politics that followed (there was literally a fucking graph that said "IF AMERICA HAD NO BLACK PEOPLE BERNIE WOULD BE WINNING"
