2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: In all the "Bernie would have won/No he wouldn't" posts I've read........... [View all]socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)...independent and discouraged voters into the fold, he would have won the primaries thanks to their votes."
That might be solid reasoning IF those independents were ALLOWED to vote in all of the Democratic primaries. That was part of the problem for Bernie running as a Democrat. He's to the left of about (my estimation) 60% of the current Democratic voters who are neo-liberals. In a LOT of the states, in the primaries, registered Dems were the ONLY ones allowed to vote. IOW a lot of places didn't let indys vote in the Dem primaries. And a lot of states didn't allow newly registered voters to vote in the primaries either. I think it was New York where you had to be a registered Democrat six months in advance before you could vote in the primary. And that's without any DNC shenanigans that propped up Hillary and hurt Bernie.
So Bernie was screwed from the beginning in the primaries BECAUSE a large part of what would have been his supporters were not ALLOWED to vote in the primaries. This also, however, screwed HRC in the GE because they WERE allowed to vote there. For the most part anyway.
Democrats and Republicans are a minority of even politically aware people who state a party preference. The independents are the majority now and BOTH parties had better figure out how to bring them in or they're going to eventually be frozen out.
I hope to bring them around to socialist revolution myself. I figure Trump will screw shit up so bad that there's a chance of that anyway.