Logic Dictates: It Would Have Been President Sanders
Yes. Would. Not could or should. It would have been Bernie Sanders as president instead of Donald Trump.
It boils down to the simple logic of playing out the probable outcomes had the Democratic primaries gone differently.
For this, eliminate all notions of how it went or how you think it should have gone and objectively consider a simple alternate scenario.
Assume for the sake of argument that Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic nomination and your choice was between Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, or abstaining from voting altogether.
Would voters that favored Hillary Clinton in the Primaries have voted for Trump after all the dedicated anti-Trump sentiment? No.
Would voters that favored Hillary Clinton in the Primaries have voted for a third party candidate? No.
Would voters that favored Hillary Clinton in the Primaries have abstained from voting and risk Trump being elected? No.
Sanders would have received votes from nearly the entire Clinton base of voters, from all of his enthusiastic supporters, from the majority of registered Independent voters, from disaffected Republicans that did not want Trump or that liked Sanders better, and from the vast majority of Undecided voters.
All throughout the election, Sanders maintained very high favorability and trustworthiness numbers while Trump and Clinton were at record lows that only got worse as the election progressed.
Had Sanders won the Democratic nomination, he would have won the election with ease.
Clinton had 65,844,610 votes to Trump’s 62,979,636 but lost key states needed to win the Electoral College. Candidates do not compete for the popular vote, they compete to win the Electoral College which is why swing states are such a big deal.
Sanders would have had 15,116,713 more votes than Clinton and about 25% (or 3,779,178) of those would have lowered Trump’s total votes. Sanders would have won the popular vote with 77,182,145 to Trump’s 47,862,923. Sanders would have also swept the Electoral College winning all the states Clinton won, all the swing states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and several Red states.
To state that Bernie Sanders would have won by a landslide isn’t speculative. It is a statement of logical fact. All of Hillary Clinton’s supporters would have voted for Sanders to beat Trump. The reverse was not true of Sanders voters who understood that another Clinton presidency would have done irreparable damage to progressivism, while a Trump presidency already has progressives forging ahead with their eyes on 2018, 2020, and beyond.
— Antyal
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You can find Antyal Tennyson on Twitter under the handle @AntyalT.
