I know all of this has been said before, but fuck it:
At the end of the day, he just didn't have it in him to go as hard against the establishment Dems as he needed to.
I think the propaganda got to him and he genuinely believes it was his fault that Trump won in 2016 and desperately doesn't want to be blamed again (Even tho he totally will be no matter what he says or does).
What we ideally need is basically a leftist version of Trump (As in not prejudiced, but with the same shameless, boisterous, don't-give-a-fuck attitude).
Do you really think the establishment Dems would've just gone away? Like I honestly can't believe people thought electing one socdem would have basically any lasting effect on the political landscape. There is a zero percent chance Hillary would've fucked off forever and Mayor McCheese would 100% be scurrying around trying to advance his career.
Mayor mccheese is the rat god? Yeah, careerists always be careering, and I have to recognize that Hillary would definitely appear on television to voice "healthy criticism" against the Bernie presidency. I don't think the effect would be lasting either, but it would've net us some soild 4 to 8 years of the democratic party being more than a wet tissue. It's obvious that a Bernie term would've been limited, but I find it hard to recognize where the limits would realistically be. I don't think it's particularly useful to think about it that much either.