2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: How Bernie's campaign contributed to Trump's win. [View all]emulatorloo
(45,567 posts)I am a Bernie primary supporter and I saw it all.
Bernie did run an excellent issues oriented campaign.
He did not want to engage in personal attacks.
However IMHO Weaver did not let Bernie be Bernie.
Weaver went negative and made Bernie go negative. Unfounded personal attacks. He insinuated she was corrupt. He said she was not qualified to be President.
Those are lines Trump took from Bernie verbatim, often crediting Bernie and quoting him directly.
No Bernie did not intend to help Trump.
But he did engage in personal attacks and unfounded smears, especially when it became clear his campaign had stalled out.
The more apparent it was impossible mathematically to win the nomination, the more desperate and negative Weaver became as the campaign was dying.
And Bernie went along with it.
I continue to admire Bernie, but I am not going to close my eyes to the desperate negative campaigning that was done,