Poll: Do Bernie or Busters bear any responsibility for Trump's win? (hear me out before voting)

Considering how close the results were in some swing states that Trump won, should Bernie or Busters, who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton under any circumstances, take a share of the blame for Trump's victory? Consider three crucial battleground states:

Michigan: Trump won by ~11,000 votes
Wisconsin: Trump won by ~23,000 votes
Pennsylvania: Trump won by ~44,000 votes.

Flipping these three states alone would have given Clinton the Electoral College win, 278-260. now consider how many votes Jill Stein (i.e. the person who received the bulk of the Bernie or Bust vote) received in these three races:

Michigan: 51,463 votes
Wisconsin: 31,072 votes
Pennsylvania:49,941 votes

This doesn't even take into account the Bernie or Busters who voted for Gary Johnson or Trump (yes, I've heard a few admit they voted for Trump), or who abstained from voting in the General Election altogether.

 

Nobody knows and never will know.

Perhaps Trump would have won by more if those guys weren't running.

 

Irrelevant OP query.

In a representative democratic system, people vote for the candidate they feel is best.

Sadly, the "choice" foisted on the public by the two massively corrupt corporate parties was the worst since Nixon vs Kennedy over 50 years earlier.

The only surprise is that more people didn't vote for Stein or Johnson.

Or Mickey Mouse.

 

Pretty small share and a very simplistic view of this whole mess. I was very fortunate because I lived in Oregon. I got to withhold my vote from the nominee, knowing it would not impact the electoral process and so did the vast majority of Bernie or Bust voters who carried through. Hillary as a candidate was completely compromised and damaged long before those votes were cast and could not successfully 'rebrand' herself. That reduced turnout for her which is always a major factor in republican national victories and then she made some critical errors in where she used her time, and resources in the final month. On top of all that, we had Comey reminding the independents and moderates of just what the next four years might be like, with republicans gunning for the Clintons constantly.

 

It would have been a better race if Hillary dropped out like she should. What a waste of billions of dollars from her supporters. I can't understand why they don't ask for their money back.

 

There was no remotely rational reason for the woman who was winning the most votes, the most delegates, the most superdelegates, and the most state contests and had a decidedly superior war chest of all kinds to 'drop out' in favor of a candidate who was not even a democrat. Bernie was not the problem. Hillary was not the problem. The process was the problem and that lays on the shoulders of the Democratic party, both at the DNC and in the states.

The foundations of the House were cracked before New Years day 2016.

 

No. Hillary Clinton being a human representation of everything people hate about the American government is what made Trump win. Bernie would have won.

 

Your exciting portrayal of the events don't make them true. Bernie against Trump would have been the best choice. Dems had no other choice, as you allude. If you wanted Dems to truly vote for their party candidate, you would have had to run a different one. No one thought she was Bill, but hoped he would guide her, if she got elected. As it was, there were no Dem candidates who believed in Dems traditional values.

 

Sock puppets all over this thread

 

. Bernie could never have even come close. If you cannot motivate blacks or Hispanics to support you over Hillary, then they are not going to come out in a general election in any greater numbers than they did for her. . if seniors and moderates can't trust that 'socialist' label and the rest of America does not even know what a socialist Democrat might be, then you have too much of a learning curve to overcome, and that requires one hell of a treasure chest that large corporate donors will not be contributing to. If the entire establishment and the republican party doing everything it can to exploit that ignorance in attack ads, you are not going to win. He's too far to the left for a general election, and the reason he polled well, is nobody saw the republican attack ads and Hillary had to soft soap the ones she used.

We had two very weak candidates.

 

Trump won, so obviously all of the old claptrap about moderation politics and respectability was bullshit

 

2016 was the year of the Populist Candidate - Sanders or Trump.

Hitlery lost because her party corrupted the entire process and screwed Sanders over rather than at least getting out of his way.

Trump won because his party did not do this. They got out of their populist's way, and he won.

 

You need to be consistent and skip the establishment/ antiestablishment crap everyone tired to sell. By that I mean hold Sanders culpable for his weaknesses not the DNC . All three candidate are responsible for where they succeed and where they fail. Hillary lost because she could not successfully rebrand her own image as calculating, cold and stale candidate rather than an inspiring, likable candidate with a fresh vision. She was a retread tire and everyone knew that the republicans would keep dragging her through the mud for four years.

. Sanders lost because he appeared to be a one trick pony. It was ALL about distribution of wealth and its impact on America , and the use of tax and spend policy to redistribute. Much of the party and much of America was still skeptical of that . He could not get blacks or Hispanics as enthused as Hillary, because they saw a wrinkle in the have/have-not dynamic and the 'social justice' model, as did women, gays and the older voters. They were simply not persuaded that the socialist paradigm through which he saw everything was the only prism to look through while racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia continued to plague our history and while two wars and international terror dominated our defense and security.

Sanders lost because you cannot win the nomination of the democratic party if you are 1. not a democrat. 2. black voters won't buy into your candidacy. 3. you have acquired the notoriously fickle youth voter, but lost the older reliable democratic voter. The DNC did not cause these demographic divisions. The respective campaigns of Clinton and Sanders did.

I have no idea how people get this idea that all these groups like older voters and blacks and Hispanics that did not like Sanders in the primary enough to lead him over Hillary, were going to swarm to his name in even
greater numbers after 4 months of intensive negative advertising by the GOP.

 

All americans bear responsibility for their leadership. Trying to apportion blame for this current clustermuk is pointless. They say the people get the leadership they deserve.

Hilary was more concerned with bernie than trump. She ran a lousy campaign and had a lousy communications strategy. Dems have always been behind the times and republican messaging confounds them.

 

Sanders lost because he was undermined and destroyed by the monumentally corrupt Clintonists, monumentally corrupt DNC, and monumentally corrupt MSM.

And of course he's utterly despised by the Deep State.

All this other stuff - while some of it is true - is irrelevant.

Sanders represented the rational best will of the People, so he HAD to be destroyed in favor of the MASSIVELY corrupt Clinton.

And of course he'd have beaten Trump handily.

 

I thought you were smarter than this simplistic crap. Sanders did not represent anything. He was your typical economic progressive/ socialist leaner that pops up occasionally in national politics like a Dennis Kuccinich or a Jesse Jackson, or Gov. 'Moonbeam' Jerry Brown . They never win. The only real difference was that he a bit more disingenuous by claiming to be a Dem rather than really being one. I voted for Sanders over Clinton, but I am smart enough to know that Sanders was as flawed a candidate as every other loser in this race. You can start by looking at who he appealed to, and who he did not. There were some clear voting patterns in those primaries that had nothing to do with anyone destroying him and those patterns are why he lost that race.

 

Jim Webb. He was an experienced moderate Democrat. He was a Marine who was awarded the Navy Cross for heroism in Viet Nam.

I watched him in the early debates. He came across to me as not the greatest public speaker, appearing sort of stiff. But of all the Democratic candidates who ran in the primaries, I thought he was the most "traditional" Democrat. In fact, I thought he was their best candidate. Of course, the MSM just ignored him in their headlong effort to get Hillary elected.

As close as the general election turned out to be, I think Webb might have beaten Trump. Webb came from the coal country of West Virginia. His people were blue collar working people, the same people who rejected Hillary and turned to Trump in the Rust Belt states. They are the people who swung the election by voting for Trump, but I think enough of them would have voted for Webb that he would have won their states. The progressive wing of the Democratic party wouldn't have loved Webb, but they wouldn't have hated him either like they did with Hillary. I honestly think that if the Democrats were not so taken with electing a woman or a socialist, he might be President Webb today.

Seth

 

The Democratic party was hell bent on pushing Hillary. They just had the first Black man elected, now they wanted the first woman. They back stabbed Bernie and his supporters so they I have no respect for the party. To blame those who didn't vote for Hilary like the "Bernie Or Bust" is not right and has been done before. People tried to blame the Ralph Nader supporters when Bush got in. the biggest ones to blame are Trump supporters and those who didn't vote. I have less respect for those who didn't vote.

 

Clearly they did not like Hilary. I think the problem is more with the Democrats not supporting Sanders. From what I hear he would have had no problem beating Trump.

 

Did you ask for your money back when Romney got wasted by the better man?

 

I will answer the OP question the way all the Leftist Fabian socialists in the Democrat party do: OF COURSE NOT!!!. Bernie, nor Hillary, nor any other Leftist, nor any part of their platform or any statements they made, are absolutely.. (they really like the word absolutely), ABSOLUTELY NOT RESPONSIBLE. Just like the server in the toilet, the wiping the disk and destroying the evidence is NOT the fault of Hillary. And the 10 trillion extra added to national debt during Obama admin, is ABSOLUTELY NOT a result of Obamas spending 1.5 trillion over budget every year for 8 years in a row. NO.. ITS THOSE DASTARDLY bible/ gun clinger deplorable, Cliven Bundy type cattlerancher/farmer, rural state dwelling, rest of the USA that actually do real work, and who were unwilling to give up their Bush tax cuts, THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE for ALL the failure of the Democrats socialist and globalist ascendency plans.

 

Yup - the DP/Clintonists/MSM/Deep State had the hit out on Bernie.

He would have DESTROYED Trump in the general, but instead, the DP destroyed itself.

It also cost them the left, and the left ain't ever going back.

 

Nope. The people who thought hillary should be president gave trump the win...excuse me I mean us deplorables.

 

Polls say Sanders is more popular than Hillary among all demographics these days, so I don't know what the hell you're on about. I've seen polls from Harvard, Pew, institution after institution coming up the same.

 

I agree. I think traditional Dems were republican lite. They were for the working man and woman, for the family, for protecting religious beliefs, for the poor due to those beliefs, for bettering minority lives through work, and for keeping our nation strong and one. I don't remember them being much for singling out one group to lower their standard of life for the sake of equality or opportunity. May not be an all-inclusive list.