The big takeaway of the primaries is that the Dem establishment is way more powerful and unified than anyone gave it credit for. Dem leaders don't want to say that out loud because it would implicitly admit that Biden won big in spite of running a terrible campaign by any metric.

Compared to Bernie (but also compared to several candidates who dropped out and endorsed Biden), Biden raised less money from fewer people, had much smaller rallies, got crushed in first 3 states, and is awful on TV. None of that mattered. The party really did decide.

I also think cable news has to be reckoned as the big winner. In hindsight, they were big winners last time too; sure, pundits said Trump couldn't win, but they still boosted him constantly for the ratings. This time, cable openly disdained Bernie and declared Biden inevitable.

Imagine if MSNBC had been half as friendly to Bernie as Fox was to Trump. But there's really no daylight between them and the Dem establishment, at least in terms of their attitude toward the left.

For skeptics of my theory, I guess I'd ask: can you imagine a hypothetical candidate who runs as a left-identified insurgent, with Bernie's exact platform, with only small donors and no corporate ties, and does better than Bernie? They can be whatever race/gender/age/temperament.

I hope the answer to that is yes. I'm not saying we should give up. I'm just saying I see very little evidence that anyone has a compelling strategy, even in hindsight, for beating the charismatic powerhouse that is Joe Biden. Which suggests some very powerful forces behind him.

Everyone has these very clever theories of what Bernie should have done to win a majority but to turn the question around: what are the clever things Biden did to win one, besides, you know, existing?

And why did your preferred candidate, whoever it is, do way worse than Bernie?