The theory goes that if only that Nasty Woman Hillary hadn't locked down the superdelegates, Comrade Bernito would have sailed easily to victory over Der Trumpenfuhrer.
This theory is... well, problematic. But let's leave that for another day. What I want to focus on is the argument, apparently, that Hillary locking down the superdelegates was some sort of foul underhanded play.
It assumes that this was cheating? I guess? Like the Electoral College, which apparently nobody knew about prior to Election Night 2016. The Democrat primary system was this arcane thing that nobody bothered to study.
Only... Bernie Sanders was running for the Democratic nomination. If he didn't study the rules, then he didn't, you know, do his homework.
Compare Bernie to Ted Cruz. The comparison is apt. They had both forged reputations as Mr. Iconoclast, refusing to go along with the impure heterodoxy of their parties (in the case of Bernie, he even refused to be a member of the Democratic Party... aside from always voting with their left flank and them never running candidates against them, but whatever). When Ted Cruz sought the Republican nomination, he was hamstrung by his own Mr. Iconoclast act, because he'd gone and burnt (bernt?) all of his bridges with the Party leadership.
It is hard to claim that you were frozen out by the party when you yourself did the freezing. I would further note that, today, Mr. Sanders is back to being an "Independent" who just happens to vote with the Democrat left wing and not be challenged for his seat by them.
There's a counterargument to this, of course, in the form of The Orange One. Like Bernie and Cruz, Trump was (is) an outsider with no real connection to the party leadership and a steadfast refusal to learn and/or play by "the rules." Only, he succeeded. While I might be tempted to say I'm not at all surprised by the ability of a businessman to accomplish that which a socialist cannot, I'll dig a bit deeper for the sake of the wafer-thin veneer of fairness.
First of all, the Republican primary doesn't have superdelegates. If it did, that race would have been between Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. We think. But still - the rules would be the rules. If the rules are designed to disfavor outsiders, then don't be an outsider if you want to win. That's not called "being robbed." Bernie's strategy was like trying to play chess by only moving your pawns - you can win that way, it's just extremely difficult.
The other obvious difference between Trump and Bernie is that the non-Bernie vote wasn't split among 16 also-rans the way the non-Trump vote was. Because of the way the Republicans split their vote, Trump was able to win with 44.9% of the vote; on the Democrat side, Sanders was less than two percentage points behind with 43.1%, but there the rest of the party was unified against him.
So yeah, if you assume that, I don't know, Cory Booker had an affirmative obligation to run against Hillary, or something, then Bernie was robbed. Otherwise, not so much.
I compared Bernie to Cruz as campaigners; it makes sense to close by comparing their post-election choices. Bernie is no longer a Democrat (except to the extent that he votes with their left wing and they don't challenge him for his seat), whereas Cruz is trying to play the game- he's backed off his Mr. Iconoclast image and is trying to work with the moderate wing of his party. One of these people is serious about winning the nomination next time. It is not Mr. Sanders.
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