Krystal Ball is a long practitioner of this, and Kulinski? I called him out on Twitter just a week before the election. So, their "Bernie would have won" is not only probably not true, but it's also tohu wevohu. (It is an admission that "he's a Dem," though, which I've known for a coon's age.)
Besides, Ball herself is a #BlueAnon grifter outside of presidential elections. Dem Congresscritter candidate before Bernie ever ran for prez? Check. Supported school vouchers? Check. Wrote for the neoliberal Atlantic? Check. Worked for a federal contractor? Check. And shit, married to Kulinski, too. I don't follow Generation Zip Zilch Nada talking heads that much, so I didn't know that before, either. Kulinski? Worked for the semi-fraudulent pergressuve Justice Democrats. (AOC's ties to a Justice Dems-funding bankster, and her one-time chief of staff's purported Justice Dems-money laundering show that.) Calls Gaza a genocide but still duopoly-stans other than presidential races. (Both voted for Stein, despite her investments hypocrisy, rather than going further left; Kyle worked for Turn on the Love Faucets Marianne Williamson before she dropped out. In addition — and while I voted for a nominal Communist while not being one, what's "good" secular humanist Kulinski doing not only stanning for but working for New Agey nutter Williamson? Seriously, Kyle might be more full of shit than Krystal. "Secular Talk" would be more like "Secular Bullshit," or "Secular Do As I Say Not As I Do." Beyond that, she's at least as much an antivaxxer as Stein and antiunion, or she was in her past.)
To put it another way? They look like, without apparently actually being DSA Roseys (not mentioned on their Wikis), they're trying to be like DSA Roseys. If Bernie had been nominated in any of the last three presidential contests, they would have dropped Stein like a hot potato. Or, even if genocide fellow traveler Williamson had been nominated, I'm sure. Or, one step right of AccommoGreens.
So, yeah, they're BlueAnon. Maybe BlueAnon with a side of trollery, but ultimately BlueAnon. And, they're picture is in the dictionary of Peter Principle "we're not Democrats but we really are" triangulators.
First, his political stances aside, Bernie's a bad campaigner. The idea that "Bernie would have won" is nowhere near guaranteed. This sets aside his age, which would have been exposed on the rigors of a presidential campaign.
Now, the actual politics.
Bernie's a genocidalist himself, first, or at minimum, a fellow traveler. Related? He's a sheepdogger for the Israeli genocide. Related? He's signed blank checks to Israel before, then lied about it. Related? He's anti-BDS, as I noted in this post about him being a warmonger outside of his Iraq War vote.
A sheepdogger second, who sheepdogged for Biden in 2020 just a week after Dear Leader and Harry Reid shivved him, then started sheepdogging early in 2023. Also, don't forget that Bernie, no more than many other Senate Democrats (he is one) said nothing when Biden became Dementia Joe. And, what I forgot to mention in my original tweet? A warmonger in general, third, who's long had a hard-on for the F-35, a plane that John Kasich knew sucked back in 2016. That said, Bernie is also a possible nuke lover in relation to his F-35 boner.
Other foreign policy problems include being a silent backdoor supporter of our 2019 would-be Venezuelan coup. A supporter of the Hillary Clinton/Dear Leader coup in Honduras.
Other domestic problems? Yeah, he voted against the Iraq War. He voted FOR the Patriot Act.
And a gun nut lite. I won't call him a gun nut, but he is a gun nut lite. But, my kindness won't hide that this has been a long-standing issue.
Finally, tho I don't have a link anywhere within the piece, I wrote three years ago that Ball was a Tulsi Twerker, long after anybody with a brain could and should have known that she was a Hindutva-fascist, an Islamophobe (the two are tied), an opponent of wars unless they targeted Mooslims, and worse.
To sum up? Bernie probably wouldn't have won. Even if he had, he would have been in many ways, and in every way on foreign policy, Just.Another.Democrat.™ But, per the likes of myself, Ted Rall and many others, sheepdoggers Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski don't care about things like that. They care about "winnability."
If the issue is winnability? Since Ball was a Tulsi Twerker? Just nominate her in 2028.