The ONLY evidence was polling and it had Bernie doing better against Trump than Hillary.

The logic is: Hillary voters who would have either not voted or voted Trump vs. Bernie voted who either did not vote or voted Trump.

You can pretend Hillary wasn't THE establishment party line people who always vote Dem voted for her and not that many other people did if you want or you can pretend the loyal Dem partisans would have been scared off of Bernie and either let Trump win or voted for Trump, but that makes no sense imo.

I'm not saying it would have been a trouncing, but he would have won MI and WI and probably PA and OH and maybe CO, AZ and some surprise red states in the west where he crushed Hillary.

Don't understand this sentence.

It doesn't seem like you understand the difference between a party primary and a general presidential election. Or maybe I'm crazy and you understand it way better than me. What's the strength of correlation between how much you win the democratic primary by and how you do in that state in the general?

In nationals. If you want to argue he would've won the popular vote by more, you have a much better case. I still think a bunch of NIMBY Dems and black people that turned out for Hillary aren't turning out for Sanders (the black people based on real evidence, the NIMBY Dems based on anecdotal evidence).

But again, produce the winning maps. He's not competitive in FL (HRC +30). In NC (HRC +14) he needs black people. How many winning maps does that give him?

Sorry your leader got schlonged.

Yes you do.

The meaning is when you subtract all the people who would have shown up to vote Democrat no matter what, especially in the states that ended up mattering, you get more people who would vote Bernie, but not Hillary, than the other way around.

The older people get the more they vote (generally) and they weren't switching parties either and that's the group Hillary crushed with. Bernie crushed with young people and independents who very often don't vote.

Dan and Vhawk, you're welcome to produce some winning maps, so I can have a good laugh.

This seems likely.

This too. Virtually everyone who votes in a party's primary is going to vote for that party's candidate in the general.

I have no idea if Bernie would have won and no strong opinion either way

@micro: re: your last post, wasn't trying to be a dick with that "couldn't understand" post. I really did not understand the syntax of the sentence.

Perhaps it was poorly written and might have been hard to understand in a vacuum, but seems like in context it was pretty clear. But, no big deal.

A pox on your house for starting this!

Dude, you've really got to get off of this thing that the primary result = a perfect predictor of the general election. This is obviously not the case. For example, the number of Virginia primary R votes combined was 1.025m; D, 783,000. This would have you believe that it's a red state D's can't possibly win, not one where Hillary won by 212K votes/5.4%.

Let's define the seattlelou vote (for this discussion) as the college educated white vote. Clinton picked up 10 points with this demo over 2012 it was a strength of her strategy and I can't see Sanders doing as well. Presidential year coalitions isn't the immediate problem for the Party. Rebuilding at the state level, off year turn out, building the bench are the priorities.

Don't think it's perfect, not even close. I would even agree that it skews more in favor of Bernie. E.g. If Bernie lost a state by say 3 points in the primary to HRC, and we have no other information, he almost certainly does better in that state than HRC because of the demographics of who votes in primaries.

But when for example in Florida, the Dem primary voters choose HRC over Bernie 2:1, then I take that as a pretty good sign that there will be more enthusiasm in the state generally for HRC than Bernie. I don't believe primary voting patterns are equivalent to zero information. For example, politard primary voters play a role in the voting of their non politard friends.

"college educated white vote" is a pretty poor description of the seattlelou vote for the purposes of this discussion.

Neocon laissez-faire reactionary is more like it.

lol I don't think they poll that though.

Yeah that's what I started thinking when I scrolled through the responses.

Anyway, Bernie gets all the Hill votes + Participation from anti-establishment liberals who probably stayed home or voted third-party. All of that would probably be enough to tip the EC to her.

HE IS A SOCIALIST. That's hardly baggage free.

Yelling the word "SOCIALIST" over and over again would not have done the damage you think it would in an election where Trump got away with what he did. This was pretty clearly an election where a huge number of people were committed to defeating the other side and were happy to go through Hell and high water to do so.

I think Bernie would have been a bad president, and I voted for him. Come at me.

I think you're underestimating the extent to which Trump really was a sui generis, de novo, other Latin phrases candidate. Yes, it was a 'change' election. But Trump was moving in a direction that an awful lot of white people wanted to move - away from being nice to minorities and pretending to care about women, in a nutshell. Bernie was moving in a direction that an awful lot of people who frequently don't bother voting wanted to move. And I think you underestimate the Cold War legacy and its impact. Sure, maybe Bernie would have won. But maybe he wouldn't. And even though you're obviously right that tribalism has really come to the fore, I don't see why it's so innately plausible that it would have gotten Bernie over the top when it didn't do the same for Clinton.

Most voters don't even understand the meaning of the word 'socialist'. If the spin masters can reframe a guy who defrauded thousands with a fake university as a powerful leader then I'm sure they can find a way to make the socialism thing work in favor of Sanders.

Bernie's rallies were powerful too, at least as powerful as Trump's, if not more so. Most importantly he had a message that people could get behind, which Hillary really didn't, unfortunately. That was really her biggest problem at the end of the day.