He did not lose the primary by democratic means, but by Democratic means. His primary performance cannot be used to gauge his performance in the general.

However, I agree that there's no point complaining about the corporate Democrats using their power to win. The thing for people who believed in Bernie to do is to get power, and use it to defeat the corporate Democrats.

You have it ass-backwards.

Losing faith in democracy would be acknowledging that the amount of huge money and influence took power out of voters hands, choosing Hilary for them. You're arguing that people shouldn't vote for the candidate they support because of a system inherently lacking in actual democratic power. You're supporting something that isn't inherently democratic.

You're right that he would have lost if he somehow won the primary. Both the Democrats and Republicans would oppose him, which is impossible to endure, unless Bernie could enact a Trump-style takeover. And the superdelegates thing among others makes that rather unlikely.

So instead we get good cop bad cop in our elections, and a corporate puppet becomes President no matter what. Which is why I like to vote third party. Giving a vote that makes me an enemy of the entire country is too much fun to pass up.