Definitely and Trump pretty clearly would’ve won re-election by pretty solid EV margin. Trump would’ve won all the states he did against Biden plus GA, AZ, MI, PA, NE-2, WI, NV and possibly MN and NH (although I suspect Bernie would’ve narrowly eeked out wins there).
At the very least, we’d have lost TX-7, NJ-7, MN-2, PA-17, MI-11, IA-3, GA-7, NV-3, AZ-1, WA-8, MI-8, PA-8, VA-2, PA-7, VA-7, GA-6, NJ-5, IL-14, FL-13, and CA-45. We’d also might’ve very well lost CA-49, NJ-11, NJ-3, TX-32, and NH-1. We’d have also lost every House seat we lost with Biden as the nominee and there might have been others I’m not thinking of which would’ve been surprise flips. We wouldn’t have flipped any Senate seats except Colorado either had Bernie been the nominee. He’d have probably dragged down Gary Peters as well.
For better or worse, the country and even the Democratic primary electorate simply don’t want what Bernie’s selling at this point in time. A lot of suburban voters who backed Biden would’ve either sat out the election or even just voted straight ticket Republican despite Trump. And it wouldn’t take that much to flip some of these races.
Remember that the house incumbents who lost in 2020 were mostly moderate/conservative members who were far apart ideologically from Sanders. This would negate the notion of Sanders having a greater negative effect downballot.
Only because they were in more competitive districts than most Berniecrats. If we’d nominated Berniecrats in a lot of those seats, we’d be losing so badly that the seats would’ve been Safe R from day one. If Berniecrats were regularly winning in Trump districts or even swing seats, then you’d have a point, but that’s never been the case. The closest we’ve gotten to a test case in that regard is Kara Eastman in NE-2 and we all know how that went.
I’m not saying Berniecrats can’t win, but you guys have to actually start winning before you can make a serious electability argument and so far the track record isn’t great outside of safe seat primaries. Even Katie Porter’s brand is far more similar to Warren’s than Bernie or AOC’s (although even that is a far from perfect comparison).
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