2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: There's no good reason to anathematize Bernie and his supporters. [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's in his interest to deflect the blame to people who opposed his candidate in the primaries.
Yes, the campaign was winnable, but the strategic choices of the campaign braintrust(keeping the candidate mainly off the stump in August, saying nothing on trade when Trump was using that issue to steadily cut into HRC's lead, not having enough canvassers in the Upper Midwest, not having the candidate set foot in the Upper Midwest, not emphasizing that Bernie's campaign had a major impact on the platform and did a lot to change the party for the better, both of which would have cut heavily into Stein's vote) should be fair game for open discussion and for the debate on where we go in the future.
I say this as someone who spent a lot of time trying to persuade young left voters to back Hillary. We could have had those votes with a few SMALL changes in emphasis and without diminishing our commitment to any other parts of the program of change.