2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Wow - the concern trolls were right. [View all]reflection
(6,286 posts)Every primary is a thunderdome. Hell, look at the Republican one. Fifteen malcontents calling one guy the Antichrist. He managed to get past it. Hillary ran down Obama in 2008 and stayed in very late, not dissimilar to Bernie this time around, and chalked it up to "we all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated." Obama got past all that. Hillary couldn't. I voted for Hillary. But this is not a birthright, you have to compete for it, and Bernie competed vigorously. Even in the middle of all that, he could have disemboweled her on the email question in the early debates and he elected to call it what it was, a nothingburger. Said he was sick of hearing about her emails. I thought that was classy.
Bernie could have just as well folded his tent and gone home once he was defeated. But he didn't. He stuck around and campaigned his ass off for her. Alternatively, he could have decided early on to run as an independent. Hillary would likely have lost even more badly, as it was obvious people were itching to burn it all down and vote for anyone but an "insider." He probably would have gotten Perot-type numbers, somewhere around 15-20%, most from Clinton.
You can be disappointed in Bernie, that's your right. But Hillary isn't blaming him.