In a idealised world Sanders and Trump would've faced off as independents but the bipartisanship nature of US politics means you have to run on one of the two tickets and Sanders got screwed over by the DNC who then treated the election as a coronation which led to Trump. I rather suspect in a straight Sanders v Trump fight that Sanders would've won. But that was then and this is now and 2020 is still two years away. The Dems need fresh blood to take on Trump and someone who can win back the natural Democrat blue collar voters in the swing states.

“One of the things that we Democrats have a really hard time is connecting to people’s hearts instead of here,” Ms. Hirono responded, pointing at her head, according to a clip flagged by the Republic National Committee. “We’re really good at shoving out all the information that touch people here [points to the brain] but not here [points to the heart].”

“I’ve been saying it at all our Senate Democratic retreats we need to speak to the heart, not in a manipulative way, not in a way that brings forth everybody’s fears and resentments, but truly to speak to the heart so that people know that we’re actually on their side,” she continued.

“We have to kind of tell everyone how smart we are, and so we have a tendency to be very left-brain,” the senator added.

Again, that was my point and I've said basically that exact same thing in the Trump thread.

Donald Trump probably can't win the 2020 presidential election, but the Democrats can lose it.


What I mean is that in a contest between Trump and a generic Democrat, Trump would almost surely lose if the current political climate holds through 2020. According to a Fox News poll this week, 38 percent of respondents said they would "definitely" or "probably" vote for Trump, while 55 percent said they would "definitely" or "probably" vote for someone else.
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Most presidents work assiduously to build on the coalition that brought them to power. President Trump has done almost the opposite, catering to his base while doing almost everything he can to alienate suburban Republicans and independents, which is why the GOP got shellacked in the midterms.
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No one knows for sure, but estimates on the number of potential Democratic candidates range from 20 to 40. In that kind of field, the ability to attract a small but passionate cadre of supporters will be more important than arguments about electability. Thus, there will be an enormous incentive to replicate the Trump model of taking unorthodox positions, stated as boldly as possible, in order to win over the most passionate ideologues and activists.
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One need only listen to a few minutes of discussion on CNN or MSNBC, or to read the op-ed pages on almost any given day, to see that a similar attitude is widespread among Democrats. If you can't imagine chants of "Lock him up!" at the Democratic convention in 2020, you haven't been paying attention.

Thus, the odds that the Democrats will elect their own Trump are very high. Of course, the one thing Trump fans and foes alike can agree on is that Trump is a unique political personality. But a Democratic candidate could substitute policy outlandishness for personal outlandishness quite easily. Many in the Democratic base could easily rally to someone promising to abolish ICE, deliver "Medicare for All," repeal the Second Amendment ... whatever. That would give Trump the ability to convince many otherwise hostile voters to cast ballots against the Democrats rather than for the incumbent.

... Sanders and other stalwart single-payer proponents see health care as fundamentally different from other commodities and believe the government should guarantee health coverage. Their proposals would move every American out of private insurance and into a new government plan.

Other Democrats and left-leaning think tanks — cognizant of how deeply ingrained work-based insurance is in our health care ecosystem and of how allergic many Americans are to massive change — have introduced more incremental approaches, like Medicare buy-ins or a supercharged Obamacare that melds with Medicaid. Most of those plans would let private companies continue offering insurance.