If Bernie was the D nominee, does the house flip?

[GALeftist]

I would really like to meet these supposed legions of voters who would have defected if Sanders had been nominated, because, anecdotally, even in Georgia (which I think it's fair to say is the most likely flip under a Sanders nomination) most of the Romney-voting suburbanites I know voted for Biden would have probably voted for Tulsi over Trump, let alone Sanders. Do people really think that these voters would have been enough to flip not only Georgia and NE-02, but also two of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada (bearing in mind that progressives have historically fared relatively well in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, as well as the fact that Arizona and Nevada both have large non-Cuban Hispanic populations)? Or, even more absurdly, that enough of these voters exist to swing the NPV to Trump when Biden won it by north of 7 million votes in reality? Get real.

With respect to the actual question, Sanders would have needed to lose an additional five seats to lose the majority. In my view, the most likely candidates are, in order, NJ-07, IL-14, VA-07, IA-03, and PA-17; it is pretty difficult for me to see anything beyond those (e.g. MN-02, MI-11, GA-07) actually flipping, even if the margins shrunk. On the other hand, I think there's a decent chance that, under a Bernie nomination, Democrats win IA-02 (the margin was so thin, who can really say), CA-21, and CA-25. In 2020, Democrats ended up losing most of the really close races anyway, so it's extremely difficult for me to see Sanders losing the amount of support he'd need to to lose the House. I think the better case to make for Bernie anti-stans is that he'd have lost the Senate, although even then I'm not sure it'd be a slam dunk.

[GALeftist]

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.

I realize that we have some pretty significant political disagreements, but I generally think you're a pretty good poster, so it puzzles me why you're making all these plainly wild claims regarding Sanders's electability. I understand that you think that progressives are not electable, but just applying a blanket 7 point swing to Biden's margin is not going to correct for that. At this point, I think even the most ardent anti-progressive has got to concede that progressivism has significant appeal in certain parts of the country. Maybe that doesn't mean that he'd win, but come on, some of these speculations are absurd. Minnesota and New Hampshire? Bernie won the primary in New Hampshire and did relatively well in Minnesota, and, more importantly, Biden won both these states by north of 7 points! This would be like if some MAGA nut waltzed in and said that John Kasich or Ted Cruz would lose or barely win Ohio. Similarly, a number of your hypothetical flips are districts where A. progressivism demonstrably isn't horribly unpopular and B. you are alleging that a nominee swap would be resulting in swings nearing double digits. I don't know, it just seems pretty obviously ideologically motivated to me.

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.

This is another thing which I wish people would stop saying. Even if your imagined scenario came to pass, I don't think you're arguing that Bernie would have lost the popular vote, which means that even in this nightmare scenario the country would want what he's selling, albeit not by enough to overcome institutional barriers. This sort of rhetoric falsely implies that there are enough voters out there diametrically opposed to progressivism that their opinion can be seen as the will of the country, and it's just not the case.

[GALeftist]

Imagine if Bernie Sanders were the nominee during the summer BLM protests.  He would alienate the base by being tone-deaf on race and lacking any credibility or accomplishments.  Can you imagine Bernie giving a major address on race relations?  Meanwhile most of his inner circle and most prominent supporters spent that entire summer attacking Biden and the Democratic Party for not getting behind #DefundThePolice or #AbolishPrison or #ACAB.  So it would have been much easier to associate Bernie with those toxic ideologies because even if he didn't support them himself, everyone around him did.

The events of the summer were largely responsible for us losing a lot of those House seats, and that was in spite of the Biden/Harris ticket distancing itself from the radical elements of the protests.  The radical elements of the protests were Bernie's core constituency, he couldn't distance himself from them even if he tried.

Imagine if this guy I didn't like was incredibly bad at everything, unlike the guy I like, who was as good as it was possible to be. The guy I don't like would lose horribly! Don't you feel stupid now, Bernie Bros??