Just for the sake of discussion what if Bernie was nominated?

[karynnj]

23. I suspect that we could still be speaking of wikileaks and the Russians

I assume that all the opposition research against Bernie would have breeched and leaked. In addition, I assume his campaign's email would have been breeched and as he said when Podesta's was, his would be embarrassing if public.

However, I really do not see the correlation between HRC's numbers on trustworthiness etc and the times when Wikileaks put out the DNC stuff (which was the more damaging IMHO) or the Podesta leaks that reflected more on him and the people emailing him - not HRC. What did have a pretty significant impact was the Comey letter. She was about 10 points ahead nationally before that letter .. and she fell to around 3 points ahead - with some polls in between actually showing Trump ahead.

There was likely no counterpart to the email problems/FBI for Bernie.

However, there is no way to really know what would have happened had Bernie been the nominee. He would have had a huge positive burst of momentum for doing the absolutely impossible - winning the Democratic nomination. EVERYONE looks better when they are winning. We know that people around him created beautiful, meaningful ads that showed America or Bernie interacting with real people - like a dairy farmer in rural VT in one that was a favorite of mine.

Now, you could say that the Republicans would smear Bernie as a communist -- but that is absolutely not true and Bernie would call Trump's friend a former KGB agent. Who is really with the Russians? Not to mention, Bernie had an 82% favorability in VT. VT is a state where many people live in small rural communities - Burlington is not typical. Why was he popular - even among the state's Republicans? He spoke to them and - even more important - listened to them.

Not to mention, Bernie is change - even as he was closer on foreign policy to Obama than Clinton was.

However, I do not think it was ever likely that Bernie could win the Democratic nomination. I consider that the 46% of delegates he earned partly a sign of how large a part of the voters in the Democratic primaries wanted someone other than Clinton. I think this was the year that Warren could have won the nomination and now be the first woman President elect. In 2008, many questioned why Obama, who was very young, didn't wait, taking the riskier path of challanging HRC. One article spoke of Durbin pushing him to do so because this could well be a unigue opportunity. I wish Warren, who shared many of Sanders' messages but who was more mainstream, would have taken the chance and ran.

I genuinely think that she would have been the winner.