Maybe. He probably would have gotten way more corporate donations in that case, though.

I can understand someone "voting their conscience" if they live in a solid red or blue state, but anyone who does that in Florida or Wisconsin or Michigan is just a fucking jackass.

Same to you. I think ultimately you and I agree on way more than we disagree on. Let's hope other liberals can realize that too and not spend the next four years in a circular firing squad.

I didn't see much pushback when Obama decided to stop putting federal inmates in for-profit prisons, but maybe that's just such a tiny percentage of the whole that they decided it wasn't worth fighting.

That's because he's the only politician with relatively high name-recognition that people don't actually hate.

Possible, but I think it's unlikely.

Primary voters are unrepresentative of general election voters, but people who caucus are way more unrepresentative of the ones who show up for the general. Basically, caucuses reward people with the enthusiasm (and the time) to spend an entire day participating in the process for their candidate. The results tend to…

That's funny, because as much as I think Sanders would have lost, I think shutting down private prisons could easily be a popular issue for a candidate who plays it right. But maybe you're right, and that particular special interest has too much power to be defied.

And the general. And the midterms. And the elections to the legislatures and governorships and so on and so on.

She would have won without the Comey letter. She would have won without the DNC hacks. She maybe would have won without the health-scare nonsense. Not that any of this excuses her somewhat shoddy campaign, but as an article on Vox pointed out, she campaigned the way she did because she thought she was winning, and…

Maybe race isn't much of a factor, but the fact is that he had very little appeal to anyone who wasn't upper-middle class and college educated.

I would argue that the rules mostly did apply during this election. Clinton carried the traditional Democratic groups, Trump carried the traditional Republican groups. The difference is lower turnout among Democratic demographics, and Republicans doing slightly better in the Upper Midwest.

Well, as always, old people vote and young people don't, unfortunately.

I hesitate to blame the guy for running for as long as he could, but at the same time, I have to think that if he'd pulled out as soon as a victory became impossible things might have gone a bit different. I also think he could have done more to deter people from all that "There's an obscure convention rule that means…

A big part of why Clinton lost was lower black turnout. Sanders certainly wasn't going to do any better than her there.

It wouldn't have hurt, but I don't think he ever had much of a shot outside of young, college educated (white) people, good campaign or not.

This is correct, but disingenuous when said in support of a candidate whose strongest states were caucuses.

I wouldn't say Sanders ran a bad campaign, but Obama's was unprecedentedly good.

It wasn't entirely because Obama ran a better campaign than Sanders. The problem for Sanders, I think, was that while he inspired a lot of enthusiasm in his supporters, they didn't come from a wide base. Obama got young white people, like Sanders did, but he also had an overwhelming majority of blacks, plenty of…

What a bunch of morons.