A variety of reasons were offered for Sanders' surprising exit from the 2020 Democratic Primary, including the ridiculous claims that his campaign staff, particularly Briahna Joy Gray and David Sirota, were primarily responsible or the laughable assertion that Sanders didn't portray himself as "patriotic" enough, supposedly Sanders not wearing an American flag pin is one of the main reasons for his defeat.
However, there are more rational reasons for Sanders defeat. The most prevalent reason offered was Sanders reluctance to get dirty and push back, much like his previously mentioned campaign staff did.
Throughout the primary Sanders annoyed his supporters as he would constantly refer to Joe Biden as "my good friend, Joe" after arguing that Joe Biden's policies were not sufficient enough in order to meet the political moment, creating a conflicting narrative. Sanders would simultaneously make the case the he had the broad political movement of young people and could swing Obama to Trump voters concerned about the Democratic Party's record on trade and job outsourcing while claiming that Biden would also have no problems beating Donald Trump in November, essentially arguing against his own electability and giving voters a free pass to vote for Biden as he was continuously portrayed as the safe moderate who would have a better shot at winning than Sanders, the 'dangerous radical'.
It is still a mystery as to why Sanders never fought harder against Joe Biden, or at least kept a consistent line of attack. Sanders and his team smothered the airwaves with Biden's disastrous record on Social Security cuts, but would turn around in the next breath and say that Biden is a good man and would make a fine President. The messaging was utterly incoherent, either a Biden nomination and presidency is a harmful prospect in terms of the tens of thousands of people that would die without healthcare each year or a continuation of the Obama-era drone strike program that has lead to hundreds of civilian deaths, or your good friend Joe would make a fine president, it has to be one or the other.
I have my own personal gripes with the Sanders campaign. Sanders needed to make his electability case much more often, constantly stating how he can win back the voters the Democrats have lost in the last few years and how his army of young voters could have kept Democrats in power for potentially decades.
Of course there were things outside of Sanders control, mainly the sudden and surprising coalescing of the more moderate candidates around Joe Biden. Endorsements from Amy Klobuchar, Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg coming at such an opportune time after Biden's big win in South Carolina, a media narrative was created of Biden's comeback and broad party support that was used to blunt Sanders momentum. There were reports of former President Obama making calls to the other candidates in the race and using his influence to get them to drop out and back Biden. Buttigieg made the sudden decision to change the destination his private plane was flying to in order to fly back to South Bend, Indiana, where he announced his decision to drop out of the race and quickly endorsed Biden, after claiming that he was looking forward to the next primary contests, with people believing that this was all Obama's doing.
Back in February we wrote about the audio of Donald Trump's meeting with businessman Lev Parnas, during which Trump stated that if Bernie was Hillary Clinton's vice president in 2016, the election would have been much harder to win. In the same audio recording, Trump and the people at the meeting start mentioning that Biden is entering the race and could well win the nomination - which he now has - at which point one of the people in the meeting say "I hope Biden runs" and all of them laugh, because they know that their chances of winning in November will be much higher if they have to run against Joe Biden as opposed to Bernie Sanders.
Sanders should have made that audio the focus of his campaign ads, focusing on the fact that Trump literally wants to run against Joe Biden and that Biden would hand Trump another 4 years in office. Instead, Sanders relied on his usual stump speeches about being willing to take on the pharmaceutical industry or the fossil fuel industry, which is great, but it only gets the people who already supported him excited.
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