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tsogud said:
Jumpin said:

Bernie isn't responsible for the fact that a large portion of his fans are not actual progressives, but rather just "Bernie or Bust" people who pretend to be progressive. Anyone who even had the remote interest in progressivism would have certainly voted Clinton over Trump since she was clearly far more progressive than he was on not just a policy level, but a wider philosophical level. It's not simply that these "Bernie or Bust" people were not just abstaining from the vote either, they were actively campaigning for others not to vote Democratic in the election; they were indirectly working for the Republicans.

You're correct, he isn't responsible especially because that statement isn't true. The "Bernie or bust" people were a small minority of conservatives and moderates who were never going to vote Hillary anyway. An overwhelming majority of Bernie supporters and primary voters or "fans" voted Hillary in the general, as expected. That minority didn't cost Hillary the election, Hillary did. Literally the easiest election ever and she lost.

Here is a link with a breakdown of the voters in retrospect.

Actually, it looks like nearly 26% of Bernie primary voters belonged to that group, about 12% of them voted Trump. That leaves 14%, or 84,000 of the 600K Bernie primary supporters in Michigan, 79,800 in Wisconson, 102,500 in Pennsylvania, which would have been enough to give Clinton a very comfortable lead, rather than a narrow loss in each of those states. This would have given Clinton a majority victory. Even a much smaller percentage than that 14% would have been enough.

But the bigger problem was the massive social media campaign against Hillary Clinton launched by the Bernie or Bust movement. It was a relentless conspiracy theory based attack which positioned itself from the left, calling themselves progressives and leftists. Otherwise, no way in hell Hillary Clinton should have otherwise lost, even the headcount of those involved in the movement who DIDN'T vote Trump would have been enough for a Hillary Clinton win. This doesn't even get into the numbers that were swayed by the relentless attacks (I was getting hit by it up to dozens of times per day on Social Media, even progressive news sites had jumped on board)... and I am not even in the same hemisphere as the US. I can only imagine how intense it was within the US.

Anyway, there's a problem with US democracy in that people are voting very heavily based on personality and not at all on issues or policy positions. The result of it all was the US voting in one of the clearest examples of a demagogue in the history of western civilization.



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.