Why Bernie Sanders lost

The socialist label was too much to overcome in a year when Democrats just want to beat Trump

Bernie Sanders is not going to win the Democratic presidential nomination—at least not without some unforeseen medical event for or historic gaffe from Joe Biden. My latest delegate math projects that Sanders will be down 140 delegates after the states that have voted so far are finished counting their ballots. By next week, if polls are correct, that deficit will grow to roughly -240 delegates. There won’t be any coming back from such a sever margin.

Sanders knows the trouble he’s in. At a speech from Burlington, Vermont on March 11th, he said that he was winning the primary’s ideological debate, but “losing the debate over electability.” He launched into a laundry list of policies he believes Joe Biden is too moderate on and said he’d be challenging him on them—if not for the nomination—at Sunday’s televised debate.

Sanders’s struggle to convince Democrats that he is electable is certainly one reason why he has lost the party’s presidential nomination. An exit poll from Michigan show…