2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: It kills me to come to a gathering place for democrats [View all]Gothmog
(154,549 posts)Again, Sanders was a very weak general election candidate who had no chance of being the nominee. There was no need for Clinton to attack Sanders in that Sanders had been rejected by Jewish, African American and Latino voters. Sanders only appealed to a mainly white base and that is not sufficient to win the nomination.
Second, Sanders supporters were over-reacting already even when Sanders was not attacked. See the examples posted above.
Finally, Sanders did not return the favor and did attack Clinton. Trump had fun using Sanders attacks in the general election Sanders had no chance of being the nominee after Super Tuesday but continued his campaign which hurt Clinton. Here is a good example Sanders really hurt Clinton I am still mad at the number of times that trump used Sanders' claims against Clinton. Sanders' baseless charges that the system was fixed and rigged were used by trump to great effect and hurt Clinton http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rigged-system-donald-trump_us_5855cb44e4b08debb7898607?section=us_politics
I think he was able to thread a certain toxic needle. But he did win, and were all going to pay the price.
John Weaver, aide to Ohio Gov. John Kasichs presidential campaign
The underlying irony for those who sought to end what they perceived as corruption is that they may well have elected a president whose record through the years and whose actions since the election signal it could be the most openly corrupt administration in generations.....
And if Sanders rhetoric during the primaries started that stew simmering with his talk about the system only working for the rich, Trump brought it to a full boil with his remarks blaming undocumented immigrants and trade agreements that he claimed were forged as the result of open corruption.
Sanders' bogus rigged process claim hurt a great deal