Bernie filled stadiums. Much as I like Hillary, she just wasn't an exciting candidate.

[HassleCat]

117. Your map illustrates the southern primary strategy.

Look at the solid yellow region across the southeast. Our party is heavily black in those states, although black voters do not make up such a large fraction of overall voters. The result is primaries where black voters have a big influence on our party, and general elections where white voters dominate. This is significant in the southeast because blacks and whites don't like each other, meaning our southern strategy tends to favor candidates who will have trouble in the general election. We have to live with this because we are not willing to cozy up to southern white voters by ignoring concerns of black voters.

The big question comes when you look at that swath of Bernie primary wins across the north. Those states should have gone to Hillary, and several of them almost did. The fact they didn't suggests our appeal is narrowing, concentrating more on minority voters particularly black voters. This might be a result of racism, or white resentment, or white backlash, or something like that. It could also be attributed to our failure to remind white working class voters that we are doing positive things for them, that we represent their interests and concerns far better than the other party. If you want to blame it on Bernie, it's true he got those states whipped up about his economic justice ideas, only to leave them flat when he couldn't win the nomination.

Being Democrats, I suppose we will never figure out what happened, let alone what to do about it. It's easier and more fun to blame each other and debate which segment of the electorate we should write off. We do the circular firing squad thing so well.