2016 Postmortem

Unless you think a significant portion of ex-Hillary supporters would either refuse to vote for Bernie, the official Democratic Party nominee, or worse, vote for Trump? In fact, sad though it may be regarded, IMO he would not only get the vast majority of ex-Hillary supporters, as Hillary got ex-Bernie supporters, but he would also receive more votes from the "undecided" and "independents" outside the party. That is who would've take him over the edge.

On your post above, I'm sure many down ticket Dems would not refuse corporate donations, it would be a matter of individual choice. And if Bernie continued his small grass roots donations plan?...Well its not been tried before, and in the end of the campaign Bernie was out earning Hillary even with the average $35 donation. But more than that, looking at political optics, who would those 'independents' that wanted to change away from the establishment go for?...the billionaire that accepts millions in dark money, or the candidate that runs his entire campaign on small donations from the average person? Hillary was painted into the opposite corner that she could not get herself out of.

To be fair, I admit that I would have thought during Bernies first months in, I and even Bernie himself probably, never thought his message would ring so loudly. And that a self declared socialist would get so many crossover votes from normally conservative voters. I was only hoping that he would become popular enough to at least affect Hillary and force her to run left instead of right. That part worked...but for naught.

But as it went on, and despite the media blackout, he continued to draw yuuuuuge crowds, and the fact that he was drawing support from non-typical segments I, and many others, began to see the possibility of a real change putting the 99% ahead of the 1% for once and setting things back on track. But it was already an uphill battle and he lost. The rest is history.