A candidate that gets "damaged" by a primary run has no business anywhere near the GE.

[SunSeeker]

71. Because he cared more about himself than the Democratic party.

He was not a Democrat. He used our party, as he himself acknowledged, for the visibility and credibility of running as a major party candidate rather than a third party candidate--because he wanted to win. He wanted to win so bad he ran maligning personal attack ads against Hillary, falsely accusing her of being bought by Wall Street, complete with cartoon money bags flashing across the screen. He kept demanding her Wall Street speech transcripts, suggesting she was dishonest. All while never disclosing his own full tax returns (just a partial 2014 return), which gave Trump permission to pull the same thing. He made the outrageous assertion that she was not qualified to be President, which Trump gleefully repeated, even giving Bernie credit every time he said it.

But the worst thing he did was poison his followers against the Democratic party (and Hillary) with his baseless conspiracy theories about the DNC, that he had somehow been cheated and the primary was rigged. He hung on way past the June 7 California primary which Hillary won commandingly. That resulted in his supporters spoiling for a fight at the convention and fucking booing Democrats at the convention who supported Hillary. It was beyond messed up.

Then, he claimed he was going to do everything to help Hillary in the GE, but I did not see him hold huge rallies in the GE. I saw him do TV ads for local propositions, like the pharma reform initiative here in CA and single payer in CO, both of which failed. In the end, he had no juice, none. And he never repaired the damage he did.

That said, Hillary was still on her way to a win before the Comey letters. Those letters are what cratered her in the polls and really depressed the Dem vote. But if she hadn't been damaged by Bernie attacking her character, she may have been able to withstand those letters. And maybe if Bernie hadn't normalized withholding past tax returns, Trump would not have gotten away with that outrage.