If you don't have the support of the base, you won't be the nominee.

[radical noodle]

55. Maybe

but Bernie isn't a Democrat. They knew he'd never been part of the party, so why should they? I'm just throwing out possibilities, but I didn't see much positive support from Democrats who had not previously been Democrats.

Bernie certainly had the support of a group of voters who support and champion economic equality. Some were Democrats, some were not. I somehow think that some of those "new" voters who supported him do not necessarily support the party. I've seen no statistics to tell us whether this is true or not, but I've seen evidence of it here and elsewhere.

Bernie stayed in the primary too long. By doing that he raised the hopes of his supporters more than he should have. Sure, Hillary started with the support of the super delegates, but there is no reason to think that if he had actually had more votes that they would not have shifted allegiance to him. Bernie started the primary by vilifying the super delegates and ended by trying to get them to overturn the voters. Hillary got the majority of the regular delegates but Bernie just kept fighting it, which resulted in some of his supporters becoming even more angry at Hillary. They believed all the RW talking points about her. They spread the hate. I don't think we can deny that calling Trump and Hillary "basically the same" had an impact.

I am not painting all Bernie voters with the same brush, but those who didn't vote for Hillary because of Bernie love are at least partially responsible for giving us Trump. I see some of them even now posting that Trump is better than Hillary.

It's not that Democrats want to deny access to the primary to Bernie voters, it's that they want to deny access to those who are not Democrats. If a person doesn't know they're a Democrat six months before their primary, they probably aren't Democrats.