The Atlantic: The End of a Political Revolution

For now, his political revolution has come up short. From the start of his campaign, Sanders called for a fundamental transformation in American political life so that the voices of average Americans would not be drowned out by wealthy elites and the gap between the rich and poor would not be nearly so vast. Yet Democratic primary voters overwhelmingly sided with Clinton’s pragmatic incrementalism over Sanders’s enthusiastic idealism. If the senator’s dream of revolution is ever to be achieved, it won’t happen with Sanders as the next president. [...]

It is remarkable that a self-described democratic socialist managed to get so close to the White House in a country that so ardently proclaims its adoration for free markets. Sanders did not prove that embracing socialism is a winning proposition, but he showed that the label is not politically toxic either. [...]

Sanders has attempted to lay the groundwork for a lasting political movement, but there too the future is uncertain. He endorsed an array of congressional candidates as well as contenders vying for seats in state legislatures, though that effort has already encountered setbacks. His presidential run has given rise to a grassroots army of supporters looking for ways to carry on the fight. The question now is: how much success will Sanders and his followers have in building a movement that outlasts the campaign?  

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FiveThirtyEight: What Bernie Sanders Meant

Of course, election results are only one way to measure a candidate’s success. I had argued before the primary that Sanders’s biggest impact might be to push Clinton further to the left on the issues. The jury is still out on how much Clinton changed her rhetoric versus her actual positions (see: the $15 minimum wage), as Dave Hopkins of Boston College pointed out. Still, there can be little doubt that Sanders changed how issues were talked about during the campaign. Clinton didn’t try to beat Sanders by tacking toward the center, as Al Gore often did when Bill Bradley challenged him in 2000. Rather, Clinton highlighted issues where she was further left than Sanders, such as gun control.

Sanders’s greatest effect on Clinton’s positioning may have been on trade. Clinton entered the race having once called the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement the “gold standard.” She ended up against it, even though President Obama, whom she hugged closely throughout the campaign, was pushing the agreement. Sanders was resolutely against TPP, and Clinton ultimately flipped to Sanders’s side of the issue. Sanders also got Clinton to back free college tuition at state colleges and universities for all but the top of the income distribution. [...]

Let’s start with the most obvious problem that Sanders ran into: He never caught on with black voters and didn’t improve with them as the primary season went on. Black voters are the base of the Democratic Party. Clinton lost without them in 2008 and won with them in 2016. Clinton won every state where black voters made up at least 10 percent of the population, except for Michigan.1 In the North, Clinton regularly won black voters by 40 to 50 percentage points. In the South, she regularly won them by 70 to 80 percentage points. When you’re losing by this wide of a margin among a voting bloc that makes up somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of your party’s voters, your candidacy is going to have a hard time winning.

Sanders also struggled tremendously with Latinos, who are growing as a percentage of eligible voters. Sanders lost every contest, except for Colorado, where Latinos made up at least 10 percent of the voting eligible population.2 Further, as my colleague Nate Silver calculated, Clinton won 16 of 17 districts3 where Latinos made up a majority, beating Sanders by an average of 32 percentage points.4 Simply put, the two most consequential minority blocs in Democratic politics didn’t feel the Bern.

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