What Went Wrong for Bernie?
This might be a silent majority election.
The media loves the “voters are angry” trope, with Trump and Sanders’ success as exhibits A and B. But neither have captured a majority of voters in their respective parties. Maybe angry voters are just the loudest.
Sanders’ Mistakes
Despite enthusiastic supporters and well-attended rallies, the delegate math doesn’t look good for Bernie Sanders. In a New York Times story, Sanders and his strategists analyze their campaign’s strategic errors, including:
- Not starting to campaign early enough
- Spending too much time and money in New Hampshire and not enough in Iowa or Nevada
- Insufficiently reaching out to the black community
It’s not over yet, but Sanders needs to win all remaining states by a solid margin (or, if he loses any, achieve landslides in the states he wins) and the campaign going on record with What Went Wrong is not a good sign.
But the real question, which is nearly impossible to answer, is whether he’s losing because of campaign strategy or because of something less mutable?
Could Bernie Sanders have kept all the same ideas, but focused on other states or constituencies and emerged victorious? Or do a majority of Democrats just prefer Hillary Clinton (because of her policies, political approach, experience, whatever)?
Make America Better
Think of it this way: maybe you saw that decision tree that went around the internet helping you decide who to vote for. The first question was “is shit broken?” and if you said yes, that led you in the Sanders/Trump/Cruz direction, while if you said no that led you to Clinton or Kasich.
It was just a joke, but it helped me realize that no, I don’t think shit is broken. There are many ways it can get better, but it’s not broken.
Perhaps that’s what went wrong. Sanders needed a majority of Democratic primary voters to believe that shit’s broken, that billionaires’ influence is so pervasive and malignant that nothing positive can happen. But they don’t.
