This take is reductive to the point of dishonesty. It was, in fact, rigged for Clinton in a number of ways. Major media outlets invariably attributed an overwhelming majority of superdelegate votes to Clinton, right from the beginning. In all the reportage most people saw of the race, this dishonest framing gave a strong impression that Sanders had no chance—that voting for him would be a waste.

To say nothing of any other chicanery that took place, that went a long way to depress progressive turnout, and dissuade any moderate Democrats from considering him as a serious contender. The media were pro-Clinton in a much more fervent and mask-off way than they’ve ever been pro-Trump, and mainstream Dems, by and large, believe the shit they read in WaPo and NYT.

Do you not remember all the leaks showing extreme bias towards Clinton, derision of Sanders, and even deals between Clinton and the DNC?

The emails and documents showed that the Democratic Party’s national committee favored Clinton over … Bernie. … The leaks resulted in allegations of bias against Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign in apparent contradiction with the DNC leadership’s publicly stated neutrality, as several DNC operatives openly derided Sanders’s campaign and discussed ways to advance Hillary Clinton’s nomination. Later reveals included controversial DNC–Clinton agreements dated before the primary, regarding financial arrangements and control over policy and hiring decisions. source

Or that DNC leaders argued in court that they didn’t need to hold impartial primaries and could select whatever candidate they wanted?

… DNC attorneys argued that the DNC would be well within their rights to select their own candidate. source

For their part, the DNC and Wasserman Schultz have characterized the DNC charter’s promise of ‘impartiality and evenhandedness’ as a mere political promise—political rhetoric that is not enforceable in federal courts. The Court does not accept this trivialization of the DNC’s governing principles. While it may be true in the abstract that the DNC has the right to have its delegates “go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way, the DNC, through its charter, has committed itself to a higher principle. source

At the end of the day, yes, Bernie got fewer votes. But that is a small part of the iceberg, ignoring all the things that led up to it and all the biases at play in the organization putting the vote on in what I would (and did) call a “rigged” primary.

The primary was rigged before it even began. Typically when there’s no incumbent you’ll see several politicians make a run for the nomination. But 2016 was different. Hilary and the DNC went around to all of the presidential hopefuls in 2015 and basically told them to sit this one out because it’s her turn. Hilary was supposed to waltz her way to the nomination uncontested because they didn’t want a repeat of 2008. The only reason we got the Hilary vs. Sanders contest at all is because Sanders was an outsider so he didn’t get the memo (or perhaps they didn’t consider him a serious threat).