All of these arguments about 2008 being less competitive than 2016 are missing the point. We couldn’t have known earlier in those years what the outcome would be for sure. People assumed that 2008 would be a close race up until the recession, and many assumed that Clinton would win easily in 2016. The point is that Sanders did try to convince his supporters to back Clinton, and was largely successful. Blaming him for what a very small percentage of his supporters did is disingenuous, and just comes across as another excuse to attack Bernie, blame him for everything, and retain old grudges. He’s claimed that he will support any of the Democratic candidates, so how about we focus on this year, and not attack him as divisive unless he clearly walks back on that.
This is totally disingenuous. The real problem was that Sanders stayed in the race far, far too late, and for totally bogus reasons that were obvious lies and that exacerbated serious divides within the party. That doesn't even necessarily mean lots of Sanders supporters defected or sat out the race in the general election, but the promotion of the perception that Clinton was "unclean" or "unfit" from Sanders resonated as much with swing voters as with the left and was the real damage Sanders did, which he could have easily prevented by dropping out after Super Tuesday when he clearly could no longer win the nomination. He had no business being in the race (and gave really foolish reasons for staying in), and it was sad, pathetic and ultimately a major cause of Trump's victory. And nothing he's said has indicated that he won't do it again; a pledge to support the ultimate nominee doesn't create any reason to expect more from him than the tepid and weak support he did ultimately give Clinton far too late in the process or prevent him from making the dumb argument that he made in 2016 that the nominee wasn't decided until the convention (edit: it's possible it won't be, especially in the multi-cornered election this year, but that's beside the point). And he's given exactly zero reasons for people who didn't vote for him in the primaries to trust him; he's just as much of a disloyal, self-serving snake as he was then.
(This does not exonerate Clinton's bad behavior on roughly the same issue in 2008 - but at least in 2008 she had a theoretical chance much later than Sanders did in 2016, and could have still won had superdelegate defections not overwhelmed her. It was a poor strategy on her part, and I did not support Clinton in 2008 in the primaries, but she made very clear her turnaround after the primaries were over and was unabashed and bold in her support for Obama, a stark contrast with Sanders. In any event, Clinton is not running in 2020.)
