For a long, long while, those of us who actually vetted Bernie Sanders from the Left had suspected that Bernie Sanders helped Donald Trump get elected president.

Here at TPV, for example, we pointed out that both Sanders and Trump appealed to a narrow demographic of 'white working class' voters (who we now know were motivated by the 'white' part in the last election rather than the 'working class' part) on the basis of xenophobia - Trump with his anti-immigrant boast and Sanders with a tradephobic message that singled out Latin American and Asian countries as the ones to be afraid of. Both Sanders and Trump failed - or more aptly did not care to - appeal to the broad, vast, diverse swath of America that came from all races, colors, creeds.

Both Trump and Sanders delved into violent imagery, although Trump much more directly so. Sanders did his part with invocation of 'revolution.' That revolution is seen by many Americans whose families come from Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa as bloody, violent, and harmful was unseen by Sanders and his loudest supporters. To ignore that rhetoric is hardly better than right wingers claiming that confederate statues and flags are merely historical artifacts.

But until now, those of us who observed this phenomenon lacked hard numerical evidence of Sanders' culpability in Trump's ascent to the White House. We now have that evidence.

The 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, a massive undertaking involving 50,000 poll-respondents, finds that fully 12% of Sanders voters in the Democratic primary switched their votes to Donald Trump in the general election. The most important factor that moved Sanders voters into Trump's court? Again unsurprisingly to critical and objective Sanders observers, that factor was a form of racism - the denial of white privilege.