I just want to rant a little and I have nowhere else to do so (friends are so dejected about everything, no one wants to discuss it).
Yesterday, I was convinced Bernie could've won it. But then I saw the results from the single-payer initiative in Colorado and disagree with that assessment. They voted OVERWHELMINGLY against it. This was one of his big policy proposals to help the working class and a more liberal than average state destroyed it.
He was right about feelings on trade and I guess that might have allowed him to eek out a win? But Republicans demonized Obamacare so much that I don't see how Bernie campaigning on Medicare For All doesn't get raked through the coals just as much.
However, I want to say that I believe that Democrats need to stop fighting among each other and figure out what the campaigns of Hillary, Bernie, and Obama did well and what they did wrong and try to correct them. Casting blame solves nothing and simply makes the party weaker.
Bernie did a good job on messaging single-payer with Medicare For All but I don't know if that would have allowed to him to not get trashed over it. He did a good job identifying outrage with trade (even though I disagree that this is a real issue). He did not appeal to minorities and that's why he lost the primary. Minorities did not turn out as well for Hillary as they did for Obama so I would assume that they'd be even less likely to turn out for him; however, that might be a bad assumption.
Hillary made in-roads in traditionally red states: Texas, Georgia, and Arizona. She did very well in Texas compared to Obama. So that's at least one positive. But yeah the campaign was trying to expand the map when they should've been playing defense. The data was wrong (at least publicly).
Operating under hypotheticals is hard. If the Comey letter had not been released, would she have won? I think so, obviously by a much smaller margin than polls showed but the margins were so small in "firewall" that I believe she would've won. So under that assumption, they were attempting to flip NC to get a Senate seat and a Governorship which makes sense. Wisconsin seemed like a lock for Feingold too so that's another issue. But I realize the Comey letter is the risk you take when you nominate someone who is under an investigation like that. You also know that the email issue was not covered in a fair way by the media and that was obviously not going to change.
I don't know, I just needed to write some stuff down even if it's garbage! I could keep writing about this forever I find the whole thing both interesting and horrifying.