2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: We Should Only Let Democrats Choose Our Nominee [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There was and is huge support for what Bernie advocates WITHIN the party. And the overwhelming majority of independents who voted Bernie would simply have re-registered and participated in caucuses and primaries anyway, so the results would have been much the same.
Bernie's candidacy had nothing to do with Trump taking the EC. The voters felt exactly the same way about HRC before and after Bernie's entrance into the race.
There were some bad people who identified as Sanders supporters(as there some bad people who claimed to be HRC supporters)but the vast majority of the supporters of BOTH candidates were and are good people who simply want to work for a better world.
HRC would not have done better in the fall if her campaign and fall platform had had NO Sanders influence to them, if she had run on the same platform as 2008. There was no large group of votes to be won by pretending Occupy and the anti-austerity movement hadn't happen or by being totally just fine with total corporate dominance.