RAMESH PONNURU: The Left’s Fantasy World Just Exploded.

The idea that Sanders could win was far from crazy, given his dedicated fan base. But the larger story line of socialism’s coming triumph was based on one misreading of political events after another.

In the first place, socialism hadn’t spiked in popularity. In 2010, Gallup found that 36 percent of the public embraced the label. Eight years later — following Sanders’s first run for the presidency, and in the same year Ocasio-Cortez got elected — that number had climbed up all the way to 37 percent.

Left-wing Democrats misunderstood the reason Sanders did so well in 2016. It was because Hillary Clinton was the front-runner. Few Democratic heavyweights were willing to take her on, and he was an idealistic alternative. He did more for socialism than socialism did for him. A poll taken that January found that Sanders’s supporters were less likely than Clinton’s to want a higher minimum wage or bigger government.

Clinton’s defeat that November further fed the myth. Sanders’s supporters instantly concluded that “Bernie would have won.” Many Democrats wondered whether Clinton had erred by not taking a tougher line on Wall Street or offering populist ideas on trade.

Read the whole thing.