If you're a progressive you've probably had one thought stuck in your head for the past 12-plus hours: Bernie would have won.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, pushed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the brink in the Democratic presidential primaries this year. But Clinton, with the overwhelming backing of the party establishment, prevailed -- and went on to lose a close general election Tuesday to Republican insurgent Donald Trump.

Now progressives who backed Bernie are stewing over what might have been. This was a "change" election, that has been clear for more than a year. Clinton represented the status quo.

"The Bernie voters and the Trump voters are two sides of the same coin: Scared, angry and frustrated," former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican, said Wednesday. "[Trump's] supporters were always the motivated ones; hers never were to the same degree. They voted for him. Hers voted against him."

Would Sanders' positive populist message (single-payer national-health insurance, free college tuition, the end to big money in politics) have trumped Trump's negative populist message (out-of-control crime, murderous illegal immigrants, inner-city "hell," the U.S. losing badly to ISIS and the rest of the world) in a general-election campaign? Many progressives believe so and have taken to social media to say it out loud.

If democrats hadn't screwed over Bernie Sanders we'd probably be talking about President-elect Sanders right now. #ElectionNight — The Catch Fence ™ (@TheCatchFence) November 9, 2016

Picking a Neoliberal over a Progressive. What were you thinking @TheDemocrats #DontBlameMeIVotedForBernie — Jimmy Jimenez (@SomeGuyNM) November 9, 2016

The truth is, we just don't know what would have happened if the general election had pitted Sanders against Trump. Polls back in the spring insisted Sanders would have won by double-digits, but surveys that far before Election Day are not reliable. At the time, most Democratic Party insiders and opinion-makers, rightly or wrongly, believed Sanders was "unelectable."

Still, this was a change election, and so it was an election that favored a candidate who inspired passion. Britain's The Independent reminded us this morning that "at rallies for the 74-year-old [Sanders] across the country, there was a sense of euphoria and excitement that simply did not exist at those for Ms. Clinton. Ms. Clinton's supporters said they had made a calculation to vote for her as they believed she would be the best candidate to lead the country, but there was no sense of the passion witnessed at her rivals' events, or those of Barack Obama eight years earlier."

Sanders, now 75, isn't likely to run for president again in 2020 to keep Trump from a second term. But if grass-roots progressives get behind a new candidate -- a Sanders II -- you can bet the party establishment will think twice before concluding he or she is not electable.

-- Douglas Perry