Again with this "more electable candidate" absolute ridiculous framing. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat; in point of simple fact, he is the longest-serving Independent in congressional history and a self-described Democratic Socialist.

I do not believe it is such a difficult concept to grasp that a political Party -- and the vast majority of their voters -- will quite naturally want to nominate a member belonging to their own political Party versus someone who did not, never has and still does not belong to it.

As for Bernie's runs for the White House, he was favored by Independents (go figure and state the obvious) and younger voters but struggled to gain traction with women, people of color and older voters (your basic actual Democrats), and therefore by Super Tuesday he lost by double digits and massive margins in states like South Carolina. The race was already over. I fully understand that the punditry and media worked their asses off to bring the drama and make it seem like Bernie could win, but the race was mathematically over by Super Tuesday. Hillary Clinton won three out of the first four contests, most of the Northeast, and the entire South... all of it. Bernie won primaries in the upper Midwest and in states where they had (stupid) caucuses.

Be that as it may and still, the "Bernie narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016" absolute and total myth persisted, and fast forward to 2020 where (probably because of a crowded field), Bernie actually underperformed his numbers from 2016 and again lost the South... all of it. Even Bernie's home state of Vermont handed him a much smaller victory than 2016. It is easy to locate online so please do the political math.

I think it's not rocket science to deduce from 2016 and 2020 that many of the votes for Bernie in 2016 were basically "not Hillary" votes in a virtually two-person race, and I reiterate that Bernie Sanders, Independent and self-described Socialist never caught on with the vast majority of Democratic voters.

Progressives are fed up with the whole "play it safe -- nominate someone unobjectionable who doesn't scare suburban voters" strategy from the establishment wing of the Democratic Party.

Great. Then they should pound the pavement and garner the votes for their candidates because the voters still choose the nominee, and they should definitely stop the freaking whining that their candidate could have won and know this:

Nothing that is happening in one state in 2026 (or pick your own year) will mean a dang thing for any of the other states' elections and definitely not the federal elections of 2016 or 2020 because politics is local and it just won't. :)