Why didn’t Bernie Sanders become democratic nominee?

On two separate occasions Bernie Sanders was sidelined by democratic voters. While Bernie had a strong start in both races, he was unable to secure a final victory and become the Democratic nominee to run in the presidential election – but why is that?

Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that Bernie was seen as too radical for the majority of voting Americans to side with. Those in the democratic party were more worried about beating the other candidate by any means and did not want to take a risk with someone who might be rejected on the election stage.

Despite Bernie starting a grassroots democratic movement that had real potential to change the US political system for the better, many democrats were too worried that he was unelectable by the general voting public. This is no doubt due in part to Bernie’s status as a democratic socialist, with ‘socialist’ being a dirty work in America.

Because of America’s famous rivalry with Soviet Russia during the Cold War, many people are afraid of the term ‘socialist’ because it shares some of the views of communism. While communism itself is not necessarily an evil ideology in theory, the way it was applied in Soviet Russian and other totalitarian states like North Korea means that many people associate it with those evils.

This is some capitalized on by all of Bernie’s political opponents, no matter how dishonest it really is. Simply conflating Bernie with communism is enough for many voters to dismiss him out of hand.

Bernie is likely too old now to get a third chance at running for President, which is a shame for many people who had faith in the change he wanted to bring. Other candidates simply have more ‘mainstream appeal’.