2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: The Lie [View all]Uncle Joe
(58,349 posts)candidates, the Iraq vote would be moot as would Wall Street and super-pacs.
In addition too many people remembered the disastrous tenure of Bush the Least.
The same can't be said for a Bernie/Hillary match up, Bernie's strengths are diametrically opposed to Hillary's weaknesses in regards to the mood of the country.
After the Occupy Movement made its presence known, I believe Bill saw the writing on the political wall in regards to status quo politics and economics, he recognized the potential political threat of Bernie's message should it take hold.
The corporate media conglomerates did as well, I believe they saturated coverage of Trump and blacked out Bernie from the very beginning because they knew "some of" Trump's message also pulled from Bernie in regards to free trade, corruption of government due to mega-bucks and waging war, as I posted above because they feared a Bernie win more than a Jeb loss.
So the corporate media conglomerates were willing to take a gamble that Bernie would would lose and fall out of the race and that Trump would implode on his own, thus paving the way for establishment candidates to win out.
There is also the possibility that at least some of the corporate media conglomerates didn't really believe Trump to be anti-establishment and that his "populism" was just lip service to get elected. Trump has certainly benefited from the status quo.