Bernie Sanders would have won. I can’t say that for sure, of course. Counterfactuals are inherently unprovable. But, they are useful thought experiments.

Consider that, in a stunning primary upset, Bernie won Michigan, as well as Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Indiana, all states that president Obama won in 2008 and Hillary Clinton should have won (with the exception of, perhaps, Indiana) in 2016. Exit polls show the same demographics that broke for Bernie in the primaries went to Trump in the general: independents, working class whites, and voters who said they were “very worried” about the economy. Even more astounding, demographics that should have won Hillary Clinton those states, African Americans, Latino and younger voters, showed up in far fewer numbers than in 2012. Donald Trump won more black and Latino voters that Mitt Romney. That’s insane.

Clinton tried to make the election about Donald Trump’s personality rather than focusing on policy, something that Sanders did relentlessly during the primary, even to the chagrin of some of his supporters — voters did seem to care about her “damn emails” after all. But, that backfired. Both candidates were profoundly unpopular. Going into the election, Hillary Clinton had only a 38 percent approval rating. Obama’s is currently at 56 percent. Sanders’ is three points higher than Obama’s. Rather than confront this fact, Democrats created private facebook groups where they could pretend it wasn’t true.

During the primaries, Bernie Sanders gave a campaign speech at Liberty University, an ultraconservative Christian school in Virginia. He said this: “I believe in a woman’s rights. And the right of a woman to control her own body. I believe in gay rights and gay marriage. Those are my views, and it is no secret. But I came here today, because I believe from the bottom of my heart that it is vitally important for those of us who hold different views to be able to engage in a civil discourse.”

He quoted scripture and framed his economic justice message in terms of family values.

“Money and wealth should serve the people; the people should not have to serve money and wealth,” he said to applause.

Applause. At the same school where Ted Cruz launched his presidential campaign, a school where “hand-holding is the only appropriate form of personal contact.”

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, went almost a year without holding a single press conference and avoided tough interviews like the plague. She called voters who didn’t agree with her “deplorable” instead of trying to win them over.

Ultimately, with no strong message to cut through the negative ads, voters decided to stay home.

And then there’s the matter of that October surprise. Bernie Sanders would not have had a federal investigation hanging over his head for much of the campaign. The FBI letter eleven days before election day seems to have cut into Clinton’s polling by around three percentage points, but was probably more significant than that since polls may not have had time to respond to late shifts in the race. Democrats didn’t seem to think it mattered. The rest of the country did.

Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University, accurately called the election months ago using 13 “keys,” yes-or-no questions he developed from earthquake modeling. His system has retroactively called every election from 1860 to 1980 and has accurately predicted the outcomes of every election since. One of Lichtman’s keys is whether the incumbent party is tainted by major scandal. Another is whether the candidate is charismatic or not.

Bernie’s campaign was scandal free. And, over the course of the primaries, Bernie Sanders filled stadiums with hundreds of thousands of supporters who came to listen to this gravelly grandpa talk policy. Hillary Clinton struggled to come close to that, even with help from Katy Perry, Jay Z and Beyonce. And so Clinton ceded these two crucial keys to Donald Trump. With them, according to Lichtman, Democrats would have won.

During the primaries, Bernie Sanders also won nearly every matchup poll against Donald Trump by a far wider margin than Hillary Clinton. He was an outsider in the year of the outsider. He gave no secret speeches to Wall Street for $250 thousand a pop. He wasn’t a millionaire trying, hypocritically, to weaponized Trump’s wealth. He didn’t take many of the same tax breaks as Trump or have corporate donors who did.

What makes this election loss all the more infuriating is just how much the Democratic National Committee put its thumb on the scale to ensure Bernie never had a fair shot in the primary. Institutional rules set up well in advance to combat a populist candidate like Sanders served as the first roadblock.

Closed primaries and outrageous registration deadlines ensured Sanders’ largest constituency, independents, would have no part in the democratic process. When you’re forced to select between two candidates you had no hand in choosing, it’s all the more tempting to stay home or vote for a third party in protest.

Super delegates, unelected career politicians, made it clear they would support Clinton over Sanders before anyone had even voted. Howard Dean, one-time governor turned corporate lobbyist, said he would support Clinton even after his state voted for Sanders. For a party that calls itself “Democratic,” that’s beyond the pale. And, since it looked like Clinton’s lead was insurmountable, even when the two candidates were essentially tied, voters were encouraged to bandwagon with Clinton or simply stay home.

The DNC scheduled fewer debates when fewer people would be watching, ensuring Clinton’s greater name recognition would carry the day.

During primary debates against Sanders, the interim chair of the DNC, Donna Brazile, then a CNN contributor, made sure Clinton knew the debate questions before they were asked.

The DNC laundered money from big donors through a party fundraising scheme that benefitted Clinton over Sanders, then lied about it.

DNC operatives coordinated with the Clinton campaign and the media to weaponized identity politics against Sanders — labeling his supporters sexist even while plotting to use his religion against him. They downplayed the seriousness of his primary challenge while also conspiring to elevate Donald Trump with the media, believing Trump would be easy to beat in the general election. They. Were. Wrong.

Make no mistake, this election would still have been tough. Trump would certainly have labeled Sanders too extreme, a socialist, and that might have worked in true swing states like Virginia, North Carolina, or Florida — the latter two states Clinton lost anyway. But, I firmly believe Sanders would have held onto Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and that he could have won Ohio or Indiana. Cutting into Trump’s lead with working class whites just a little or increasing Democratic turnout just a little would have been enough. And those states would have carried the election.

But, Bernie was too idealistic. Clinton supporters cautioned us to be pragmatic. Sanders would never get his agenda passed, they said. Maybe that’s true. No one knows exactly how many of Bernie’s ideas — Medicare for all, expanded social security, tuition-free college — would have made it through Congress. I can, however, tell you exactly how many of Clinton’s will.