As the 2020 election approaches and the primaries get underway, a specter haunts the Democratic Primary - the specter of Bernie Sanders. In particular, a lot of Democrats hold Hillary's 2016 loss against Bernie to this very day. They blame him for hurting Hillary's popularity, and his voters for not turning out to vote. However, Democrats need to wake up and face the truth that Hillary was a historically terrible candidate.
(**This article was first published on Publish0x, and can be found here: https://www.publish0x.com/left-antisjw/democrats-stop-blaming-bernie-hillary-clinton-was-historical-xmydmn?a=pnel78MdKB ** )
Bernie is one of the most electable candidates in the primary based on national polling, and pushing him away could very well be a fatal error. Only Joe Biden is polling better than him, and Biden is known for his gaffs.
When finding blame for Democrats' loss in 2016, there is a lot of blame to go around, but most of it comes back to Hillary's own flaws and campaign. She infamously failed to campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin - key swing states that she proceeded to lose to Trump despite previous Democrats winning them. This is especially bad because those states had been Democratic leaning for years. Obama won both easily, and they have generally elected Democratic senators and governments.
It's also worth noting that Hillary Clinton was competing only with Trump for having the lowest approval rating heading into the election. She is popular with establishment Democrats and literally nobody else. Negative opinions about her are so entrenched that even losing the election, which should have got her sympathy, has done nothing to help her approval. She is a known liar, flip-flopper, opportunist who in the eyes of most Americans basically stands for nothing. Every other national Democratic candidate in America was significantly more popular than Hillary.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/243242/snapshot-hillary-clinton-favorable-rating-low.aspx
Polling in 2016 showed Bernie beating Trump by 10-12%, and Hillary winning only only about 3%. In the end she won the popular vote by 2%, almost exactly in line with polling.
The DNC also likely cost Hillary the election. The scandals with DNC bias in the primary were 100% avoidable, and probably didn't even make the difference. Bernie likely would have lost anyway. However, a lot of Bernie's supporters were unable to move on and vote for her in November, despite Bernie himself campaigning for her in key swing states like New Hampshire. Democrats can blame those Bernie voters, but it is hard to get over unfairly losing an election.
Hillary campaigned on identity politics to carry the day for her. Her DNC acceptance speech started and ended with referencing how she is a woman going to "break the class ceiling", and she mentioned her gender several other times throughout the speech. That is not how you win over swing voters. Everybody already knew she was a woman, so telling them again doesn't do anything. This should have been obvious.
Despite these problems indicating an incredibly foolish and incompetent campaign from Hillary and the DNC, there are Democrats who to this day will not vote for Bernie in the primary because they scapegoat him for the loss. This self-delusion only further hurts the Democratic party and evidence-based voting - which should be every person's goal. Democrats may once again throw away an election through sheer stupidity and immaturity.
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