Bernie Sanders voters helped Trump become President

[Jim Lane]

314. If all of Bernie's voters had written in Bernie in November...

then Trump would not only have become President, he would have carried some additional states, and would even have won the popular vote in reality instead of just in his own fevered imagination.

It was Bernie's voters who gave Clinton her margin over Trump, even though many of those voters (raises hand) voted for Clinton with, shall we say, less than complete happiness.

The Bernie-Trump voters, evidently dissatisfied with the status quo, were the flip side of the Wall Street types who wanted a candidate from the establishment. Early on, when Bush was thought to be a strong contender, I read an article about these voters. In a Sanders-versus-Bush matchup, they'd back Bush. If it were Clinton-versus-Trump, they'd back Clinton. In Clinton-versus-Bush, they'd feel comfortable with either. They were nervous about Sanders-versus-Trump because neither could be counted on to continue business as usual. it was rumored that, in that circumstance, Bloomberg might enter as an independent. (Somewhat paradoxically, he would be running outside the two established parties but as the candidate most committed to the status quo.)

It's not surprising that some people not in the 1% gave priority to supporting a candidate who would upend the status quo. (Note to jurors: I'm not endorsing this attitude. I think those people erred. They should have listened to Bernie and paid more attention to ideology, to see that Trump was diametrically opposed to Bernie in many ways.) In fact, it was predicted before the conventions, IIRC, that Trump had a "time for a change" appeal that would get him some of Bernie's voters.

And, as others have noted in this thread, Bernie's voters gave less support to Trump than Clinton's voters in 2008 gave to McCain. It's simply the case that some people have weak or nonexistent party identification. There's no reason to assume that everyone who votes in a Democratic primary will vote Democratic in the general.