Sanders campaign has become a classic example of the phenomenon of "group polarization"

[auntpurl]

36. Yes, this leads to more polarisation

and confirmation bias.

There's a similar thing in drug trials. Many drug trials use a sample group of people who are already likely to die because of their illness. If this patient attrition (participants dropping out because they are too ill to continue, or because they die) is not counterbalanced in the data, what happens is the results start to look better and better by the end of the trial. "This drug worked for 100% of the patients!" Yeah, that's because the ones for which it didn't work died.

The DU version is, "How could this horrible thing (Hillary getting nominated) have happened? Everyone I know agrees with me that Bernie is better! It must be rigged!"

I saw someone say in GD yesterday "Every horrible thing you think about Hillary Clinton originated in some Republican's mouth."

Now, that's obviously hyperbole. She's made mistakes, some pretty terrible, but I submit that the RW smears of Hillary have sunk so deep into the public consciousness that no one has a "clean" opinion of her.