Bernie also never faced Trump in an actual head-to-head matchup, so we’ll never really know, will we?
I think Bernie stood the best chance at beating Trump in 2016, with the benefit of hindsight. I also think he could have beat Trump in 2020 (though, 2020 was a booby trap because there was no getting through COVID without some kind of economic downside). I don’t think Bernie’s message overcomes the simplistic logic at play in the electorate - “things didn’t seem as expensive 4 years ago”.
That’s the hope, but clearly we see that hope and a quarter gets you 25 cents and that’s all