However, in light of the DNC email leaks, the Democrat Party's elite seemed to sandbag Bernie, who many believe (citing polls from before the primary) would have given Trump a run for his money. And honestly, this was the Democrats' election to lose, and they did nothing to win it. So I will blame them. I will blame them for going with a candidate that is firmly "establishment" when the general consensus among the public is that the "establishment" has overstayed their welcome. I will blame them for expecting the appeal of having "the first X president" to work the same as it did for Obama.
A lot of people like to talk about his race, but I don't think it really mattered a lot. Obama won, not because he was black and people wanted to vote for that. Obama won because we had just had 8 years of Bush, the economy was in the tank, and he was young and charismatic.
The democratic nominee always had an uphill battle against a base of R's motivated for "Change", for the same reason that the party in power tends to fall behind during the midterms.
Trump won not only on a platform that was largely anti-globalization but also on the public mistrust of his opponent. Objectively, the electorate trust and like Sanders far more than Clinton and he has spent his career trying to make progress on the same issues that gave Trump the presidency. This election was about economic issues from the start and despite how demonized Trump was, Clinton didn't stand a chance because her campaign was orthogonal to what huge swaths of the population cared about.
I think the polls were so off this election cycle because Sanders lost the primary. Without him, Democrats lost their only chance to connect with voters that that are liberal but don't always vote based on social issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc (which are, along with minorities and unions, the bread and butter of the Democratic party).
Obviously this years polling was a disaster but Sanders' hypothetical matchup polls are by far the weakest argument for why he should have been the nominee.
