President Sanders? Bernie would have beaten Trump

[lapucelle]

73. Two, and one red state went blue.

I don't think that the map necessarily shifted due to Clinton. The Democratic administration (rather than the Republican congress) took the hit for stagnation in the rust belt states.

I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen more people do the right thing and actually show up and vote for the ticket (rather than stay home or vote for third party spoilers) if Sanders had won the nomination, but that's not Hillary's fault. I spent a lot of time in PA where voter suppression was very real.

A Sanders win presupposes that the media and the Republicans would have treated him with the same kid gloves as his primary opponents had. According to Eichenwald, who had seen the oppo book on Sanders:

Awash in false conspiracy theories and petulant immaturity, liberals put Trump in the White House. Trump won slightly fewer votes than Romney did in 2012—60.5 million compared with 60.9 million. On the other hand, almost 5 million Obama voters either stayed home or cast their votes for someone else. More than twice as many millennials—a group heavily invested in the “Sanders was cheated out of the nomination” fantasy—voted third-party. The laughably unqualified Jill Stein of the Green Party got 1.3 million votes; those voters almost certainly opposed Trump; if just the Stein voters in Michigan had cast their ballot for Clinton, she probably would have won the state. And there is no telling how many disaffected Sanders voters cast their ballot for Trump.

The truth of the matter is that when Sanders did not win the nomination, both Stein and Trump played the situation for all it was worth, and Sanders stood largely on the sidelines. Third party spoilers and narcissistic no shows put Trump in the White House.