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Notes -
I have 2 hypotheticals:
I ask because Sanders appealed very strongly to many Trump voters, doing great in e.g. West Virginia but lacking e.g. black support (which the democratic primaries overfocus on. Besides Wasserman-Schultz et al.'s machinations.) His approach was not based on identity politics etc. I'm curious how people think his "movement" or time in office would have turned out.
I think the first thing to note about Sanders is that while the establishment does not like Trump, they hate Sanders(and other actual socialists) a lot worse. Right-populism is bad for GDP maxxing but unpredictable left-populism is a lot worse.
So, that out of the way, we saw Hillary fail with full elite backing. Sanders with no elite backing? Hmm, that relies on a self-proclaimed socialist being popular enough to overcome that. I doubt that, especially in 2016.
I do think the coalitions would look different. The democrats are to a large extent reliant on upscale movement in their direction. What Sanders managed to win over from the bottom, he loses from the top.
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