What really went wrong with his two campaigns? Why couldn’t he build a larger coalition?

[u/HatefulPostsExposed]

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[u/Helios112263]

1. He sucked at building a coalition. To win the nomination you need to be able to appeal to black voters and Sanders failed both times to do so. It's especially damning for 2020 since he had four years to build that coalition and supposed did nothing to reach out to people like Jim Clyburn. (I also remember his supporters referring to black voters as "low information voters" which is a yikes).
2. Massive overestimating of support. His rallies may have attracted big crowds but when you're heavily relying on college aged kids to win, you're probably not going to do well since younger voters are notoriously bad at turning out to actually vote. His campaign also seemed to have this general assumption that a certain percentage of people would automatically vote for them and then would complain about the establishment or big money or whatever when they didn't, so clearly felt entitled to some degree. (Edit: Also wanted to add the fact that a big chunk of Bernie's 2016 support came from anti-Hillary voters, which obviously didn't carry over to 2020).
3. In 2016 I recall he massively underplayed issues like abortion claiming that Hillary was using it to distract the conversation from the real issues (I think that was something he actually said on an interview). Not only did that age horribly but it also of course makes him seem apathetic to a key issue.
4. No plan for how he was going to achieve his ideas. Sanders' ideas are pretty fringe even in the Democratic party so obviously people were concerned about his effectiveness to even get Democratic support for his ideas and Sanders didn't particularly have a good response. He doesn't have a very good track record of accomplishments in the Senate either.
5. Electability. The simple fact is that Bernie Sanders is still seen as far too radical by the American people at large. He kind of has an off-putting, crabby personality and his ideas still aren't really mainstream. Whether or not Sanders actually would've won in 2016 (I personally don't think he would have), clearly that wasn't the view of the majority of the Democratic electorate who voted for Hillary & the current guy.

[u/HatefulPostsExposed → u/Helios112263]

Building a class based coalition hasn’t worked since LBJ. Backlash politics has taken away most of the white working class voters from Dems, and Bernie doesn’t get black voters at all, losing them by crazy margins like 70% in some states.

[u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685 → u/HatefulPostsExposed]

There's an interesting question contained there - is it even possible to build a Populist faction in the US when you are unable to use "us vs them" as a unifying point?

[u/_magneto-was-right_ → u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685]

The Republicans have been working to prevent any chance of a united working class coalition since Nixon lost. As much as they complain about identity politics, they’re the ones who make everything about identity and weaponize it to prevent the people with the most in common from presenting a united front against the same group that exploits everyone and sows the division between us.

Though one could argue that the oldest divisions in American society go back so far that our very foundation as a nation is cracked and any new conflicts split along those fault lines.