1: Bernie Sanders would’ve been a better nominee than Joe Biden.

2: Bernie Sanders is not going to be the nominee.

3: Given (2) people who believe (1) should try to understand what went wrong.

4: Bernie had strong favorable numbers among most Democrats, but so did lots of other prominent Democrats.

5: The key swing vote in the primary therefore was people who like Bernie, but don’t hate all non-Bernie Democrats. Those are the folks he could have won, but didn’t get.

6: In the general election, Bernie’s aloofness from the institutional Dem Party could have been a strength (swing voters are not party loyalists) but in a primary it’s a potential weakness.

7: Because of (5) & (6) leaning into anti-party messaging post-Nevada was a big error.

8: Every media personality with a platform who insisted (and continues to insist!) that anyone who doesn’t share their loathing of mainstream Democrats is hostile to Bernie, for similar reasons, served the cause very poorly.

9: Clearly some establishment Dems were so fearful of what Bernie’s accession would mean for them personally that they would oppose him no matter what.

10: I spent February arguing these people were mistaken, & mainstream Dems should relax about Bernie. https://www.vox.com/2020/2/11/21120061/new-hampshire-primary-results-bernie-sanders

11: Other prominent people who portray themselves as pro-Sanders argued the reverse — that his victory would be an existential threat to every mainstream Democrat.

12: The proponents of (11) were very successful at persuading people, which was very counterproductive.

13: Going forward people who would like to see policy outcomes to the left of Biden’s proposals need to do a better job of balancing their affective disdain for the Democratic Party with the reality that this view is not shared by the people whose votes you need to win.

14: All the discourse about “toxic” twitter supporters and “civility” is mis-targeted.

15: The issue is attitude toward the party, not manners — “all mainstream Democrats are bad people who will suffer personally if our guy wins” is a losing message.

[fin]