The real engine for Biden’s comeback was built from voters. That started with the overwhelmingly black voters of South Carolina—people too many Sanders supporters have been eager to dismiss and denigrate, now as in 2016, but certainly not billionaires buying an election or shadowy operatives rigging, well, anything—but it didn’t stop there. While Sanders had built admirable strength among Latino voters and younger voters, he didn’t expand his support enough.

Voters who decided in the last few days before the election, according to exit polls, went massively for Biden. That may partly have been in response to signals from the Democratic establishment, for sure—but not in a deal-cut-in-a-smoky-back-room kind of way. Not in a deal-cut-in-a-billionaire’s-wine-cave way, either.

Party elites did decide Biden was their guy, but they only did so after he won in South Carolina—with a key boost from the endorsement of Rep. Jim Clyburn—and won big there. Biden didn’t have the advantages of a candidate the establishment decides on early and boosts throughout the early stages of the campaign. Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg led the high-dollar donor chase for much of the race. Biden didn’t even—until Monday—have an overwhelming pile of impressive endorsements. His surge didn’t originate in a secret meeting of powerful people. Maybe it was a response to key endorsements, but even if so, endorsements are not exactly a dirty trick. They’re a standard part of political campaigns.

Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont, and Texas. In North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, Sanders actually got a lower percentage of the youth vote in 2020 than in 2016. According to a New York Times analysis , “in the Iowa precincts where Mr. Sanders won, turnout increased by only 1 percentage point”—lower than in the state as a whole. And Sanders’ entire theory of change, of how he’ll win both the election and legislative victories thereafter, was decisively undercut. He has not mobilized massive waves of new voters and young voters, on which he based his plans for winning not just the primary but the general election and then Medicare for All. In fact, the state with the most notably high turnout was Virginia , which Biden won. Exit polls showed lower youth turnout than in 2016 in

Sanders was obviously not the only one to have a rough night. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg struggled badly. But Sanders is the one whose surrogates and prominent supporters are claiming a conspiracy against him, after spending four years claiming that the 2016 primary was “rigged”—when what happened was that millions more people voted for Hillary Clinton than for Sanders. And Sanders is the one who had the biggest claim about how radically he was going to shift the voting population. Where anyone who believes in democracy has to be thrilled that Bloomberg’s money-fueled plan for victory failed, it is truly unfortunate for U.S. democracy that Sanders hasn’t been able to produce the surge of young voters and new voters he’s promised. But that failure, plus a few high-profile endorsements, plus the decisions of millions of voters to vote for Biden, does not an establishment conspiracy, a coup, or a rigged primary make.