The stigma of “socialism”, to many Americans, is still strong, even if they don’t understand its inherent evils on an intellectual level. Couching socialism with adjectives like “democratic” wouldn’t wipe that away.
Politically, he didn’t face one attack ad, which would have changed had the primary been closer or if he’d advanced out of his own primary to the general. We’d have heard more about the rebuke of the “Scandinavian” presidents to Sander’s claims of how they run their countries. Most expressly did so. Google it.
His porn writing, his resume - or lack thereof - and his absolute lack of legislative achievement as a career politician would have made a Trump victory more certain.
Hell, the on-the-Street interviews with “Who said it - Sanders or Hitler?“ would have buried him. Seriously. Find a Hitler speech, substitute proper nouns for modernization and Americanization and replace the scapegoating of Jews with scapegoating “millionaires and billionaires” and you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference.
In a way, I wished he’d made it to the general; he’dve been stripped of his mythology and revealed as the ideological old fool he is.
And that’s how you argue on the Internet.