Bernie would have won.

A lot of people think this statement is a petty attempt at “I told you so.” For some, maybe, it is. For others, it’s a reminder that foresight is more valuable than hindsight.

Let’s just get this out of the way front and center: Pretty much nobody talking about this issue wanted Trump to win. We all agree Trump is a disaster waiting to happen. We all believe he’ll do irreparable harm to America, and to the world. And this is important to keep in mind as we discuss these issues. In fact, many people fought for Bernie specifically because they knew he had a better chance against Donald Trump. There’s a lot of “Hillary bashing” that happened over the past year. In some cases, this was misogyny or misguided hatred built on strange conspiracy theories. Those accusations from the right were never going to go away. We all knew that. There’s no amount of Snopes and Politifact linking that’ll make conspiracy theorists stop believing. But specifically, here, we’re talking about criticisms from the left.

If it’s not “I told you so,” then what is it? If you’re in a car, it’s snowing, and the driver is making stupid decisions you know will lead to a crash, you tell them. You try to stop them. And, because you know your life is on the line, you get pissed. You shout if you have to, because that driver is gambling with your life, and the lives of every other passenger. To many of us, that’s what Hillary Clinton, and the DNC at large, were doing in this race, and on multiple levels.

It Doesn’t Matter That She Won The Primary. It Doesn’t Matter That She Had More Votes.

This is utterly essential to recognize. Hillary Clinton won the primary, with the vast majority of her support coming from states she didn’t need to worry about in the general (such as California) and states which were never meaningfully in play in the general because they were so red (Alabama). In states where Bernie offered surprise victories, like in Michigan, Hillary Clinton had no excuse to lose. But, she lost the poor vote. She lost it by a long shot. She also lost a significant number of African American voters from Obama’s term. She also performed dismally with young people. Young people who, mind you, did not vote for Donald Trump. But people who simply did not vote. In every demographic where Hillary had significant losses from Obama which cost states, Bernie won by enormous margins.

Yes, she won three million more votes than Bernie in the primary. And you’re saying the same exact thing right now about her and Trump. But in the end, Trump is President. She’s not. We knew this would be the case. She had remarkably high vote totals in California and in New York. But in the system we have (not the system we should have), those states don’t matter. If a Democrat loses either of those states, that Democrat had no chance to begin with.

It’s unfair. It’s totally unfair. Californian votes don’t matter as much as Michigan votes. That stinks. But it’s the system we’ve got, and Democrats haven’t done shit to change it. In fact, in Florida alone, if felons were allowed the vote, by demographic, Hillary likely would have won that state. But establishment Democrats have been far more invested in being “tough on crime” instead of making meaningful progress which would all but guarantee victories for years to come.

And yes, she had more votes than any other President aside from Obama. But turnout was also the lowest it’s been in 20 years. Frankly, there’s no excuse.

Michigan and Wisconsin

The Clinton campaign was so busy trying to court moderate Republican votes, they flat-out ignored the Obama coalition. Establishment hack Chuck Schumer even owned that strategy, saying, “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

Hillary Clinton is the first Democratic candidate since 1972 to ignore Wisconsin. She repeatedly ignored pleas and dire polls coming from Michigan.

Hillary Clinton had no business courting Republican votes, except as a feeble attempt at avoiding pressure to move left. Yes, the Democratic Party Platform was “the most progressive ever.” But that was in spite of Hillary Clinton, not because of it. Literally every progressive victory in that platform was because of Bernie Sanders’ excellent candidates. And nearly every single progressive choice received pushback (or in many cases flat-out veto) by Clinton’s surrogates.

That gamble ultimately cost her the election, and stuck us with Trump. Instead of fighting the TPP, fighting for a $15 minimum wage, fighting for universal healthcare, fighting for Flint, fighting for Standing Rock, she was staying the course, and courting George Bush and Mitt Romney’s donor base by literally presenting herself as “representing their values.”

Something Something Oppo Research File

Imagine I’m talking about this theoretical opposition research file while making an exaggerated masturbation motion. That’s about the reaction I have every single time I hear it brought up.

They say Sanders never had a real campaign against him. Yet, his primary opponent had debate questions leaked to her, against the debate rules. During a debate (NOT A CLINTON CAMPAIGN EVENT), the moderators played a ridiculous, out-of-context video trying to associate him with Castro in front of an almost exclusively Latin American audience. Mind you, this debate was literally held on a network owned by Hillary Clinton’s biggest cash donor. A donor who has specifically spoken about how he buys media companies in order to influence world politics in favor of Israel.

In fact, Kurt Eichenwald wrote an entire ridiculous piece on this nonsense. And in his “huge reveals” about this supposed dirt that would sink the Sanders campaign in the general, he mentions, surprise surprise, nothing we didn’t already know.

For example, he talks about a 1972 satirical essay Sanders wrote where he talks about rape fantasies. The thing is? That wasn’t new. That was already public for nearly a year. Nobody gave a shit, because it was painfully, obviously a poor attempt at satire older than almost every voter Hillary Clinton lost in the Rust Belt.

He was also “on unemployment until his mid-30s.” Which of course is fucking nonsense if you’ve ever been on unemployment, or even remotely understand how unemployment works. Also, nobody cares. Everybody in the states Hillary lost but shouldn’t have, every one of those people has been on unemployment at one time or another, or known someone who has. People would have loved that story. Sure, it might have lost him some moderate Republican votes. But he wasn’t getting those anyway, and Hillary sure as hell didn’t. Hillary Clinton lost 1.17 million votes from people making $0-$50k in the Rust Belt over Obama. Those people would have loved to vote for someone that actually understood how hard it is, living on those sorts of programs.

Then there’s this odd rumor that he stole utilities for a few months when he was a young man. Again, this is the kind of folksy story that wouldn’t at all hurt him, and in fact might help him. If you think “he stole cable!” is going to matter when he can say, “my opponent is a billionaire who has shipped your jobs away,” you’re ridiculous.

Also, he apparently would have been attacked for supporting universal healthcare. Again, we run into the exact same issue: That would have cost him votes he would have never had in the first place, but Clinton didn’t win, either. This is all predicated on courting people Democrats don’t need to court to win, and it’s why 2018 is going to be a clusterfuck if we don’t learn, and learn quick.

They also say they would have called him a Communist, and that would have tanked his candidacy. You know, just like Barack HUSSEIN Obama was called a Communist, and a Muslim, and how that tanked his candidacy. Again, the people Democrats should care about don’t care about these Republican smears. They care about the jobs lost to NAFTA. They care about healthcare. They care about a future. They care about retirement. They care about putting white collar criminals in jail. They care about doing something different, because doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is simply not inspiring.

Something To Vote For, Not Something To Vote Against

Again, and again, and again: People need something to vote for. Hillary Clinton gave people something to vote against. That’s not enough. If you’re in a liberal media bubble, you think Trump’s speeches were just misogyny and immigrant walls. They weren’t. Trump won on message. He resonated with people. When he said, “Make America Great Again,” that resonated with a lot of people.

And Hillary’s answer? “America never stopped being great.” Which objectively is a fucking stupid statement to anyone she needed to be reaching out to. The only people that appreciated that statement were people already voting for her, already at her rallies, already lapping up whatever Amy Schumer was producing for them. It’s not just a stupid statement, but it’s utterly condescending to the people who have seen their wages stagnate for decades while Wall Street profits skyrocket. It’s disgusting to the people who still can’t afford astronomical healthcare costs. It’s insulting to the people who are literally being shot in the streets by the police state. America isn’t great. Something that’s great doesn’t need to be fixed. Everybody that voted Obama but didn’t vote Clinton, and most of the people voting Sanders in the primary knew that America needs to be fixed, and Hillary Clinton wasn’t offering that.

When Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination, he told the crowd, the working people, “You’ve not been listened to. I am your voice.” There were fucking roars. Where Hillary Clinton’s slogan was, “I’m With Her,” Donald Trump was saying, “I’m with you.” And that’s why he could beat her. Because to a lot of these people, it was about Hillary Clinton, and her turn. Not about the problems facing the American people.

And the disgusting part? Donald Trump is a rapist. He’s a con artist. He’s an oligarch nightmare. He had no fucking business being the voice of the people. But in the absence of something better, he was. And that’s why he won. He didn’t win with a remarkable margin. He won with a vote total not dissimilar to the one Mitt Romney lost with in 2012. This wasn’t Donald Trump’s election to win. It was Hillary Clinton’s to lose.

Bernie would have won.

Anecdotally, a number of Wisconsin Trump supporters have flat-out said that they would have voted Bernie, given the chance.

Why We Need To Say It

Bernie would have won. That isn’t going to change the past. Nobody thinks it will. But it could change the future.

Politics is about storytelling. Politics is about narratives. Obama was so popular because he told a good story, he wove a good narrative. And unfortunately, narratives are very hard to change once they’ve set in stone. Right now, that stone is still warm clay. And we need to make sure that when people look back on this election, they realize that meandering right isn’t going to win for Democrats. That courting “real billionaires” isn’t going to win going forward.

This wouldn’t be such an important fight to be having, if the Democratic establishment weren’t trying to sell us on every bullshit narrative they can find, any narrative that places the blame on somebody besides themselves. Yesterday, it was Comey.