No, Bernie Couldn’t Have Beat Trump Either

One of the widespread myths of the 2016—and there seem to be many—is that Bernie Sanders could’ve beat Trump where Hillary failed. This myth usually runs parallel to the myth that Hillary ran a bad campaign, a convenient theory that lets the voters (and the media) off the hook without acknowledging history, demographics, just how lazy liberals have gotten, and how far right the rest of the of the country has gotten.

But for now let’s just take a look at the theory that Bernie would’ve beat Trump if only the DNC hadn’t colluded with the Hillary campaign. [And it’s worth nothing that every losing presidential campaign in history is full of “woulda, shoulda, couldas” that usually ignore the way the country was actually leaning.]

1. The electorale math doesn’t favor him either…Let’s say Bernie did win Michigan–and there’s a good chance he would have–but he loses Virginia, so that’s basically a wash. “Well, you don’t know that he would’ve lost Virginia!” Bernie voters are screaming, but we do know that. Trump won the Virginia primary, and Hillary won it on the Democratic side and picked their popular senator Tim Kaine as running-mate and she still just barely won Virginia. Bernie wouldn’t have picked Tim Kaine as a running-mate (he said several times he would’ve picked Elizabeth Warren and he has little in common with Kaine), so there’s no reason at all to think he would’ve gotten as much votes in Virginia. So even if he does manage to flip Michigan, Wisconsin, and even Pennsylvania (which is a big if) it’s still not enough after a Virginia loss. And Bernie actually lost Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida in big losses to Clinton during the primary, so there’s also no reason to think he could’ve picked up any of them in the general.

2. The demographics actually favor him less…The biggest problem for Hillary wasn’t the fabled “white working class” vote so much as the Obama coalition not fully showing up. In all three of the close swing states (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania) African-American turn-out was substantially lower than in 2012, and even Latino turn-out wasn’t what it was predicted to be. It’s hard to imagine Bernie—who failed to muster real support amongst these groups in the primary—rallying them more than Clinton did. Then there’s the jaw-dropping stat that only 48% of white women voted for Hillary, is it really conceivable that Bernie could’ve gotten a larger part of that pie than Hillary? So for every blue-collar union voter Bernie picks up, he likely doesn’t pick up enough to offset losses of an even more depressed minority and white women turn-out.

3. People are ignoring voter data, and just how right wing the American voter has become…Democrats are at a 90-year-low point in terms of power. You don’t get that way based off of one bad candidate (which Hillary supposedly was) or a tough election cycle, this is ongoing and it signals that even though Americans are becoming more liberal, the people most likely to actually vote are becoming much more conservative. When you really listen to what the average Trump voter is saying, it’s a lot less about economics than we’ve heard (in the other media myth of “The Down and Out White Working Class Voter”) and almost exclusively about a dislike of immigration and fears of becoming a minority-majority country. Although Bernie voters loved his economic populism, there weren’t even enough of them for Bernie to win the Democratic primary.

4. No, the DNC didn’t steal the race from Bernie, just like the RNC didn’t steal it from Ron Paul in 2012… Despite what they think, Bernie did lose the primary fair and square. He didn’t win the most number of votes, he didn’t win a majority of states, he lost almost every big primary state, and he especially lost the purple states. “But how can that be when everyone I know loves the guy?!” Well, we’ve learned over and over and over that social media intensity and who can pack rallies is not necessarily who can win the Presidency. Just ask Ron Paul fans who thought the GOP surely would’ve retaken the White House if they had nominated him over “Wall Street sell-outs” like Mitt Romney. In fact, it actually helped Bernie that so few people decided to run, and if the field had been as crowded as, say, the 2012 GOP race, it’s doubtful he could’ve lasted against Hillary as long as he did or led as many of his fans to insist he was cheated.

5. People are ignoring history…I’ll keep saying it until people listen: the last two times we had successive Democratic Presidents it was because the first one died in office (JFK, FDR), and before that it was when James Buchanan stole the nomination from Franklin Pierce at a re-election convention. To find a case of 12 years of Democratic power beyond FDR/Truman, you have to go all the way back to Andrew Jackson (the first Democratic President) and Martin Van Buren two hundred years ago. In other words: it is very, very tough for back-to-back Democrats to be elected. And even though Obama’s approval numbers are very high (at least 20 points higher than Trump), the country may like him more than the actual voter who has soured in a very particular way as evidenced by Republicans winning Governorships in inconceivable states like Maryland, Illinois, and even Bernie’s home state of Vermont in 2016. That’s right, Bernie is so popular in bringing out voter-turnout he couldn’t even get enough people to vote in his home state’s Democratic Governor.