President Sanders? Bernie would have beaten Trump

[nemo137]

125. I really don't think so.

We can't know, and there certainly wouldn't have been the same interference from Comey, but I think this author (and other folks I've seen making the "Bernie would have won" argument) are severely understating the extent to which Trump got people out based on their fears and anxieties around race, gender, and dispossession. I think that that would have remained the same. Sanders was better on trade, but it would have been trivial to paint him as just another Democrat politican who wants to take your money and give it to thugs in the cities while you get nothing, which was the appeal that brought voters in rural and exurban Wisconsin and Michigan out. I don't think the economic appeal he was making would have made a dent in that - we saw that in both the town halls he did recently. People are curious, but end of slipping back in to "but it's going to raise my taxes" or "I work hard for that I got, but I know not everyone did."

If we were able to peek in on a timeline where this and only this changed, I'd be you a beer that the result ends up substantially the same (popular vote/EC split, with Trump getting to 270).