Where did this idea that the Bernie bro’s sat out and cost the dems the election? Where is the analysis that is the demographic that swung the election? I’ve never seen it. If it exists I’ll take it for what it’s worth but on the surface, I don’t buy it.
Pa had 1.66 million primary voters in 2016. Clinton got 2.926 million votes. She underperformed Obama by 63k votes. Trump won by 44k votes, outperforming Romney by 290k votes. Going into Election Day her campaign wanted to carry a margin of 450k in the southeast pa counties. They left those counties with a margin of more than 475k. That alone should have won them the state. So where did she underperform and Trump excel? Literally every suburb in the state. The corridor from Scranton to Wilkes-Barre, Erie, Johnstown, south central Pa. areas that have been reliably blue for decades. She got crushed in those areas for a number of reasons: her assumption that she would win them all, Trump running an effective campaign of stoking fear in Islamist terrorism to convincing people the Mexicans were taking their jobs and bringing in drugs. Clinton stayed out of the state and ran ads that highlighted the offensive stuff Trump said. She should have ran ads about all the people that lost jobs when his businesses folded, highlighted all of the contractors that went out of business when he stiffed them on contracts.
Trump ran an effective campaign of lies. Clinton ran an ineffective, lazy, and presumptuous campaign because she and her team thought they had PA in the bag.
Blaming the 2016 election on Bernie bro’s is lazy and disingenuous. It completely ignores the facts that Hillary was a terrible candidate that ran a bad campaign and Trump ran an effective campaign that stoked fear and boosted turnout.
I don’t see tens of thousands of suburban and rural Bernie bros in pa swinging the election.