2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Eichenwald: The Myths Democrats Swallowed that Cost Them the Presidential Election [View all]Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Yeah, Bernie did "think he could become POTUS". And maybe he would have. Sure, the conventional wisdom beltway people didn't think he could, but they didn't think Trump could, either, did they? Hell, they thought for sure we'd be seeing Jeb Bush as the GOP nominee.
Maybe you didn't notice, but the self-assured proclamations from Manhattan and DC didn't rack up a particularly good batting average this cycle.
They also thought that getting an endorsement from Beyonce would be more persuasive to the electorate than talking Jobs to rural Michigan. Hmmm, Go figure.
Bernie also did a fuckton better than HRC in the Rust Belt during the primaries and might have actually spoken to the deep economic anxiety of those voters. Maybe.
If we want to "post morterm 2016" we should ask what actually went wrong, and understandably people are going to have differing opinions on that.
Not surprisingly the folks who were pushing the "racist sexist berniebros" narrative now would like us to believe that everything was done hunky dory perfectly in the Clinton campaign and losing was somehow Bernie Sanders' fault.
Now, If someone wants to propose an amendment abolishing the electoral college, I'm all for it. But it's not like it's gonna get ratified by the necessary number of states. By definition it would be removing power from numerous ones and concentrating it in the hands of a couple. Why would other states support that?