Of those, Sanders won only Colorado. If there’s anyone expanding the electorate, it’s Biden. Ironic, I know. I would’ve never guessed it, but the numbers don’t lie.

Meanwhile, Sanders’ own numbers are going backward. Here are his 2020 vs. 2016 vote totals in the Super Tuesday states:

BERNIE SANDERS VOTE totals 2020 2016 Alabama 74,867 ⬇️ 76,399 Arkansas 51,855 ⬇️ 66,236 California TBD - Massachusetts 359,198 ⬇️ 589,803 North Carolina 318,772 ⬇️ 467,018 Oklahona 77,302 ⬇️ 174,228 Tennessee 128,694 ⬆️ 120,800 Texas 736,920 ⬆️ 476,547 Vermont 79,919 ⬇️ 115,900 Virginia 306,052 ⬆️ 276,370

California will take its usual several weeks to get a final count, so we don’t know anything there yet. Of the other nine states, Sanders’ vote totals went down in six of them.

Sanders’ vote increase in Texas was impressive (even if he did ultimately lose the state), but some of those drops were dramatic. In his own home state of Vermont, he barely got 50% of the vote as his total dropped a shocking 31%.

All told, in 2016 he got 43.1% of the total vote. So far, this year, he's running at 27.65%. Even if you were to add Elizabeth Warren’s entire total to that amount (and not all her support would go to Sanders), it would still only add up to 40.41%. No matter how you slice it, his movement shrank.

This has always been about simple math. His 43% in 2016 was short of a majority. Why not work to build that back up? He could’ve done so in any number of ways:

He could’ve stayed a Democrat, working to help Democrats get elected. Instead, he ran against and demagogued the party that he needed to elect him.



He could’ve worked to expand his support in the Black community. Instead, he skipped Selma, didn’t bother to try and get South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn’s endorsement (which ended up supercharging Biden’s results), and refused to adapt his “all lives matter,” one-size-fits-all economic message to an intersectional one that explicitly acknowledges the effects of race on policy and governance.



He could’ve set a tone that extended from him to his surrogates to his fan base that prohibited treating any potential ally (read: Democrats) as the enemy. Even had his 30% gambit worked, he would’ve needed to rally the support of those very same people to win in November. Maybe it made supporters feel good to rail against the “neoliberal corporatists” or whatever empty slogans they used to slur supporters of other candidates. But how was that, in any way, conducive to winning either the primary or general election?



I know Sanders and his campaign have been in love with their enthusiastic youth support. But no one will ever win a majority on the backs of the youth vote. It is the lowest-performing. And while young voters can be motivated to turn out at higher numbers (Barack Obama was good at that), they will never outperform reliable older voters. If you have a candidate who is running strong with the youth, and another running strong with seniors, I can tell you with 99.9% confidence who will win that election. Sanders always needed to build beyond that youth vote. He didn't.



Instead of wasting time trying to win back Obama-to-Trump white working-class voters, he should’ve focused instead on Democrats. Those Trump voters are (mostly) lost to Fox News land. Like trying to get voters who don’t vote, trying to woo voters who abandoned the Democratic Party for Donald Fucking Trump was always a weird play. In the end, that vote never materialized. Or, if it did, it went to Biden.



He could’ve handed his movement to a less divisive, less polarizing progressive. Yeah, I’m thinking about Elizabeth Warren, someone who could bridge the divide between the left and the establishment, and who had a track record of delivering on progressive priorities. But it didn’t have to be her. In a party that is heavily dominated by women and people of color, he could’ve found a standard-bearer that pushed his priorities, but is better able to reflect what our party has become. Instead, his personal ambitions overrode such considerations.

If I sound a little bitter, it’s because I am. We’re stuck with Joe Biden despite starting with the most diverse field in our history, and any number of candidates who would be better standard-bearers than him. The left isn’t shut out just yet: Let’s see who Biden is picking for VP. But a Biden administration will be a slog. No kids in cages! But still, a slog. And instead of rallying around a progressive who could be electable in a Democratic primary, Sanders and his movement bet it all on a kamikaze 30% strategy.