2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: How Bernie's campaign contributed to Trump's win. [View all]DanTex
(20,709 posts)The first thing you mention is financial corruption. Have you heard of Dodd Frank? Did you know it passed almost entirely on party lines? Tell me again how "both sides" are to blame.
Bernie didn't bring up any new issues that Democrats haven't already been fighting for for years. Big money in politics, Dems have been fighting. Financial regulation, Dems were there. Minimum wage, global warming, healthcare, education, go right down the list. Everything he talked about was just a repeat of all the same things that Obama has been fighting for while the GOP obstructed him.
Bernie had two "innovations." The first was to falsely blame the "establishment" for everything that was actually the GOP's fault. And the second was to "one up" Obama by taking all of Obama's ideas, push them a little farther, and then backstab the Democratic Party (the people who have been working hard to actually try and get things implemented) for not signing on to fantasy world where there is no such thing as congress.
The most ludicrous example of this was the $12 vs $15 minimum wage. The minimum wage is $7.25, and the only way that will change is if Dems win congress. Period. Talking about 12 vs 15 is like me deciding whether I should win 5 or 10 gold medals in the next Olympic games. They are just numbers with no connection to reality. I wish someone else would have come around and argued for a $20 minimum wage and then accused Bernie of being a "corporatist neoliberal" for only supporting $15, just to show how dumb it all was.
I'm not saying the Bernie is the only, or even the main reason Hillary lost. There are a lot of reasons. Most events have multiple causes. Bernie was one of them. Another was that Hillary had a lot of baggage, and didn't have the same ability to connect with voters as say Obama (or Bernie for that matter). And the emails, the FBI, the hacking. Also white racial resentment. And so on. It all played a role.