Don't Dismiss Bernie Sanders

[markpkessinger]

21. Not only does he energize younger voters . . .

. . . he also pulls in very high approval ratings among independent/unaffiliated voters, from which any Democratic candidate must draw significant support in order to win nationally.

And for those who blame Bernie for Hillary's loss, the notion that Bernie caused Hillary to lose is based on the mistaken assumption that the group of Bernie primary voters who either stayed home during the general election or voted for a candidate other than Hillary (estimated at around 13%) would have voted for Hillary but for Bernie. What folks who blame Bernie fail to understand is that this group of 13% consisted for the most part of people who were strongly negatively disposed towards Hillary from the get go. Many of them registered as Democrats solely because of Bernie; otherwise, they would have remained unaffiliated with either party. It may be that if those falks had voted for HIllary, it would have been enough to put her over the top. But the fact of the matter is that whether Bernie ran or not, those folks were never going to vote for Hillary under any circumstances. They were never HIllary's votes to count; and they weren't even Democrats' votes to count but for Bernie.

And to those who say Bernie is "divisive," seems to me there was plenty of divisiveness to go around on all sides in 2016, and there is even now. People accuse Bernie of being divisive while they regularly and routinely trash him on DU, oblivious to the fact that Bernie does still have a base among the membership here, even if it is a minority. Is that not being divisive? Bernie did nothing more than any other primary candidate would have done.

I supported Bernie in the 2016 primary, and Hillary in the general (as did the great majority of Bernie primary voters). I don't y7et know who I sill support in the 2020 primary. My gut tells me that Bernie's moment has likely passed, but I'm willing to keep an open mind. What I am certain of, however, is that trashing ANYONE running as a Democrat is a fool's errand at this stage in the game, and that the very worst thing our party can do is to get caught up in lingering resentments from 2016 in a 2020 campaign season.