paranoia

I didn't say anything about "turns".

To become a high ranked member of the democratic party that is in consideration for the US Presidency, you have had to put in decades of political work and show loyalty to the party. You have had to work within the constraints of the party, even when you don't 100% agree with them, and be considered as responsible by the public for bad decisions. Your career may have hit rocky patches because of choices the party made, despite them not being your personal beliefs.

To be Bernie Sanders was actually quite an easy political position, for the most part. He got to vote how he liked, did not have to sit under the party whip, and was only responsible for his own decisions. He did not have to do anything that was politically difficult, as he was never in power.

So my view on it is that there is just no reason why the democratic party should have gone along with him as their representative. If he wanted to have a chance at being the president, he needed to put in the political legwork, become a democrat, and have to go with the party whip sometimes, even if he didn't personally believe in what he was voting for.

To have selected him would have meant that there was one less reason to be a democrat, as you could just be an opportunistic, populist independent.

Great, then mirror some of his policies. However were I a democratic politician, I simply would not reward a politician who has been outside the party structure for decades with endorsement for presidency. For me it would effectively be like skipping the queue.

As a non American I don't see why the democratic party should have chosen a guy who deliberately chose to spend his entire career outside the democratic party.