Bernie or Bust: The DNC’s hard lesson it will probably have to learn again Christopher Hopkins Follow Mar 25 · 4 min read

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The craziness of the last four years has been enough to keep anyone occupied, but way back in 2016 a growing community was making its voice heard. After the close California primary where Secretary of State Hilary Clinton took 53% of the vote, accusations were rampant (and evidence later showed) that Clinton’s campaign was working with the DNC in a corrupt push to sway to people towards the establishment democrat’s favorite candidate. “Bernie or Bust”, The niche movement which started showing up on Twitter on various social media platforms, exploded.

Liberals were, in a word, offended. Opinion articles and editorials began emerging, blaming Bernie Sanders’ supporters of racial, or classiest privilege. Some even denied it a serious position, saying Sanders supporters will “come around”. The argument of privilege is provocative, a dash true, and overwhelmingly disingenuous. The term “Bernie Bro” was soon coined, and a stereotype of a white, middle class, likely college educated young voter was molded to it. Clinton’s campaign embraced the slur, her various Facebook affiliate’s making one mention of them or another as a way to bring more people into her fold through shaming.

Online campaigns spreading propaganda weren’t uniquely foreign — in fact a majority of campaign office resources were often spend on the web. Trump himself spent a majority of his personal wealth devoted to the campaign on Project Alamo, the 94 million dollar brainchild of Brad Parscale, which brought together digital advertisement, donation requests, and online interaction metrics together to become a powerhouse of name recognition and money. In the end, the project brought in over 250 million dollars in small time donations, and invented “cost-effective donor discovery”, a specific method of interacting more with people who have already interacted with their campaign before.

Fast forward to November, and Hilary is now confident after securing her Democratic nomination. As she herself put it, “The hard part is over”, and all polls had her leading Trump by a wide margin, giving her odds averaging over 90%. Exit poll data seemed consistent in the early hours, but then, one by one, states shifted in ways no one predicted. First Clinton lost Pennsylvania, then Ohio, then Michigan, and Wisconsin, all states who’s electoral votes were pledged to the Democratic Nominee Barrack Obama in 2008 and 2012. When the election came to a close, to her total disbelief, Donald Trump was declared the President-Elect and Clinton conceded the race the following day.

The question soon became “What happened?”

Although many people have tried to already rewrite history, blaming the controversial campaigns of Green Party’s Jill Stein or Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson, but each candidate only stole away 1.07% and 3.27% of the vote respectively, hurting Trump’s base electorate more than Clinton’s. The hard statistic to swallow, is 12% of Sanders supporters went on to vote for Trump.

Brian Schaffner of University of Massachusetts went on to crunch the numbers issue by issue to find key reasons why Sanders’ base, who are way closer to Clinton on the political compass than Trump, would find Trump more appealing. One issue that drew lines was Clinton’s support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, something Trump opposed. Almost 70% of Sanders’ supporters who voted for Trump were highly unfavorable of the TPP, polling 55% with those who voted for Clinton, and the 40% who did not vote. President Obama’s approval rating was also a dismal 20% with Sanders’ camp who voted for Trump, over 90% for those who voted Clinton, and 55% with those who did not vote. Overall, he concluded, it was each party’s candidate being unfavorable that drew votes. Supported by Gallop, 28% of Clinton’s supporters voted for her because they had an unfavorable view of Trump. 28% of Trump supporters also voted for Trump with Clinton’s unpopularity being the main driving factor. Sanders supporters, on the other hand, had 34% unfavorable views of Clinton, and 67% unfavorable views of Trump, numbers which, in the end, saw a 12% voter turn out for the Republican candidate.

Every election has its outlier voters, but the question for history becomes, “Did Clinton’s dishonest methods and establishment push back against Sanders hurt her election?”, and the answer is an astounding yes.

Specifically, if the Sanders-gone-Trump voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had voted for Clinton, or even stayed home on Election Day, those states would have swung to Clinton, and she would have won 46 more electoral votes, putting her at 278, more than enough to win.

Not only did Sanders voters give Trump the election, they won her the popular vote as well. If Sanders voters hadn’t voted for Clinton, she would have catastrophically lost. Not just the national popular vote either; Clinton would have lost all the states she lost anyway but by larger margins, and would have also lost New Hampshire, New Mexico and Minnesota by even the more expansive figure, Virginia.

The DNC’s refusal to accept who their base is, and fighting for moneyed interests and promoting establishment candidates is doing nothing but harm. The veil of benign populism has fallen off, and now in 2020 billionaires have been buying their way on the DNC’s stage, Sanders supporters are again being called racist, and Obama-era establishment Democrats are working with the DNC to suppress the viability of Sanders and other outsider options.

With the media beginning to label Joe Biden as the presumptive nominee, the democratic party has to ask itself if its confident Biden and his status quo movement will drum up support in an era of declining voter turnout, if they can once again ignore the “Bernie or Bust” voters, and if they decide Trump is a better president than the Vermont Senator would be.