I believe that if Bernie had been the Democratic candidate, he would have become the 45th President of the United States. The Primaries were rigged against him, maybe that would not have made a difference, but either way, if he had been the Democratic Candidate against Trump, I believe he would have won.
The cards were stacked against him in many ways.
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Super Delegates:
Good old Superdelegates. Clinton's had 602 of them. A super delegate can be a major elected official, senator, house representative, former president, or member of the Democratic National Convention (DNC). It's basically like these government officials try to buy out a candidate. I think they are very unfair, especially in a case like this. Bernie only had 47 superdelegates.
The Democratic Primaries lasted from February to June 2016 in which Clinton prevailed over Sanders with Superdelegates throughout the whole process. Every week, the superdelegates would increase, therefore showing a huge lead over Sanders. It sort of gave the impression that Sanders had no chance of winning because it appeared that she was crushing him every week.
When you take superdelegates out of the equation, she really wasn't leading over him by that much. She only had 359 pledged delegates over him.
I think if the superdelegates weren't in the equation and increasing for her every week, people would have thought he had a better chance and more people would have come out and voted for him in the primaries.
The Media:
Bernie's spotlight in the media was pretty dim compared to Trump and Clinton's. Though, he did shine during all of his debates against Clinton. Sanders killed it every time, talking only about his policies and things he was going to do as President like free healthcare, free college tuition, and raising the minimum wage. He also called Clinton out on all of her Super PACS and giving speeches where people attending had to pay over $2,000 to attend. Despite doing so well in all of the debates, he still had little airtime.
Out of all the media coverage during the primaries, only 11 percent focused on the policy positions of the candidates. Seriously?! Isn't that what it's all about…fixing the issues in our country, isn't that the purpose of being President? Bernie Sanders is the only candidate that delivered when it came to talking about a policy platform, yet the media chose to talk about Trump grabbing women by the p**** and Clinton's emails.
Primaries Rigged by DNC:
So why did Hillary get so many Superdelegates and so much media attention? Apparently, the DNC did everything they could to make sure Clinton was the Democratic candidate.
Just a few days before the convention on July 25, we all conveniently found out that the primaries were rigged. WikiLeaks released 20,000 emails DNC/Clinton emails, conspiring to make her the candidate. The DNC even had a joint fundraising committee with the Clinton campaign.
They strategized with Democratic T.V. personalities like MSNBC's Chuck Todd to discredit him, to make Bernie look like he wasn't doing as well as he really was in his campaign.
One email chain highlighted in a New York Post article was the Chief Financial Officer of the DNC, Brad Marshall, talking about how to frame Bernie as an atheist to the public.
Marshall argued that “My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and atheist." This is turn would lose points for Sanders in some Southern states.
Well, isn't that just lovely?
Bernie's Huge Following:
I am proud to say that I am a part of his huge following. Never has anybody gotten such a large following of young people that are now extremely passionate about politics. Sanders is a breath of fresh air compared to all of the crooked and ego-minded politicians out there. He tells it like it is and only talks about the issues he stands for, and not being afraid to call out Trump, Clinton, and the media who were biased against him.
I had friends that volunteered for his campaign and traveled the country promoting his awesomeness. If you've seen any of his rallies, they were so charged with energy, everyone there believed wholeheartedly in him, way more so than for Clinton and Trump in my opinion.
Young people absolutely loved him. I became a Bernie aficionado. I would post about him Facebook all time about his different policies and clips of him killing it in debates. I tried to get people to go out and vote in the primaries for him. I was pretty staunch against Hillary, just because I loved Bernie so much. He was just so much more honest, and real, actually talking about issues that I care about.
To put in perspective his overwhelming young people vote, he got over 2,052,081 votes in the primaries from people under 30! Clinton's was 766,425 and Trump at 828,675.
It's an understatement to say that Bernie killed it in the youth arena. Yet many media members, apparently conspired by the DNC, undermined how great his campaign was.
Low Democratic Voter Turnout:
With Clinton's tainted reputation, and rightly so, with her email scandal and being a part of the DNC's rigging the primaries to make her the candidate, made her very unattractive to many.
Many people had a slogan: “Bernie or bust." These were people that were voting Sanders in the Presidential election, despite him not being the candidate. People refused to vote for Clinton because they disliked her so much.
Other people were just disinterested in voting because they didn't like either Trump or Clinton. I mean, in my eyes I thought it was extremely to vote for Clinton against Trump because even though I'm not a huge fan, she is way better than him.
There were also many people that voted for the Independent candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson.
As for the Democratic turnout, it was much lower than in 2012. For example, Obama won Michigan by 350,000 votes, and Clinton lost to Trump by close to 10,000 votes. That says a lot.
Bernie Would Have Won:
My theory and many others' theory is that Bernie would have beaten Trump. First of all, can you imagine the debates between the two? Bernie would have 'Trumped' him every time.
Since Clinton was unpopular among so many, I think Bernie could have enthused and scored much more Democrats than she did in the election.
He would have gotten all the Independents that voted for Stein and Johnson. The Republicans that didn't like Trump, I think some of them would have voted for him too.
So I just really want to thank the DNC for screwing this up for us.
