Sanders stayed in a race he knew he could not win as early as March. Why? It served no other purpose but to damage Hillary and help pave the road for Trump electoral.
Clinton didn't lose because of Sanders.
I would argue differently. Without Sanders’ zombie campaign, there would have been more than enough time, resources and focus to address the actual enemy and most of what led to Clinton not being President. Two primary factors—racism and sexism among white Democrats—would have still been an issue difficult to surmount, but a unified party would have had an additional six months to address them in stark relief against Trump.
There would have been no bitterly divisive civil war that both the Trump camp and the Russians fostered, manipulated and benefitted from; no false equivalancy nonsense; no “Hillary didn’t have a message” bullshit (since there would have been no slightly left of Hillary opponent pulling the Price is Right strategy); and, perhaps most important of all, no “Comey effect” as the reason it was arguably the single largest impactful event on her taking the Oval was due to the unusually large percentage of undecideds voting last minute. More than enough, in fact, to have single-handedly caused the minuscule percentage shift in PA, MI and WI that cost her the Oval.
Sanders stayed in because he was winning primaries. Not enough to win the nomination
Then he should have got out of the race. Winning the nomination is the only purpose of the primaries. I’ll repeat that. Winning the nomination is the ONLY purpose of the primaries.
but enough to finally give the left wing an illusion of a voice (illusion of a sound?)
Nonsense. Sanders only “voice” was promising unicorns out of one side of his mouth while stating categorically out of the other side that he knew it wasn’t possible for him to deliver any unicorns. It was, at best, the same old fringe radical nonsense that is in
every Democratic primary, only before social media—which only promotes negativity effectively—no one ever pays it any attention except the irrelevant radical fringe.
Both parties have radical fringes. In this election, it was those fringes that were shifted to Center stage due exclusively to the weaponization of the new mainstream media source (i.e., social media), which had never before been utilized in this manner. Obama’s campaign was the first modern day campaign in this regard, but the medium was in its genesis. It wasn’t until Putin, in fact, realized its potential in Russia that he hit upon its use in America. And the irony is, he got the theory from us; he just put into practice.
He most certainly did not. He stayed all the way to the bitter end, escalating his attacks, while being a knowing puppet of the Russians. But more importantly, he stayed knowing that he never—at any point past March—could have won. It served no purpose other than his overinflated ego. There never was a “revolution.” That was a completely fabricated political narrative that preyed upon a liberal messiah ideal that in turn only appealed to an otherwise insignificant minority of primarily young college-educated kids just awakening into the body politic. Political virgins, if you will, who were easily swayed by fantasy rhetoric that allowed them to ignore the fact that Sanders’
policies—at least those that even he would admit had any hope of being implemented—were essentially the same as Hillary’s, only just slightly to her left.
Hence the “Price is Right” strategy. Hillary wanted a $12 min wage, so Bernie said $15. Thank kind of thing. By bidding a dollar more than whatever Hillary argued for, Sanders could positing himself in the center, but still take advantage of the rhetoric of pretending to be the more “progressive” candidate and the irony is that it wasn’t Hillary that moved farther right; it was Sanders who has moved farther and farther right his whole career, culminating in where he stands now; to the right of Hillary advocating that the Democratic Party abandon its anti-abortion and minority focus and instead go after white working class.
Way too little too late and definitely not “fully.” He skated a fine line between all-in with a wink and a nod to say he’s really not all-in.
after getting a good deal of his platform into the DNC platform.
By “good deal” you mean slight modifications to what was
already the DNC platform.
Hillary Clinton was hounded by 30 years of anti-Clinton propaganda that finally gave the GOP the mother of all payoffs and by getting burned in the only gamble she has taken politically... going to Georgia and Arizona for the landslide victory. Had she stuck with Virginia and Florida as the most exotic states and campaigned WI, PA, and MI more, she probably would have won.
A commonly asserted hindsight trope that is disproved by simple logic and the available information at the time.
She nominated white bread to be her running mate which had very limited benefits.
But also no detriments, which is what she was going for more than anything else.
Also, the FBI really did her no favors, from the fake Clinton Fndn "indictment" story and Comey needing to come out twice about the email investigation due to shady shenanigans from the right.
Agreed, but again, had Sanders bailed when he should have—when it was clearly mathematically impossible for him to win—then the impact of those events would have been severely negated, because it was the late voting undecideds that were the most impacted by such ploys. And the only reason they would be undecided that late in the game would have had to have been due to the lasting damage done during the primary civil war, that not only wasted time, resources and focus but also had Democrats fighting Democrats and Democrats fostering the same false equivalency lies insisting—VERY LOUDLY AND ANGRILY—to their friends and family all of the lies the GOP manufactured and the Russians pushed.
You had both barrels of the shotgun firing at Clinton for
months leading up to the general—and then a repeat of everything the Russians/Sanders camp had been attacking her with (and more, of course as a result of the responses to what they had attacked her with) in the general—and one side of that barrel was being gleefully fired by Democrats.
Again, what happened was the normally and rightfully dismissed radical left suddenly being moved center stage and given the loudest megaphone. After all the smoke cleared in the primaries, Sanders only managed to move about 5% of registered Democrats. That’s it. That’s what it was all along. But due to the new medium, that 5% mole hill became a mountain.