We'll never know if Bernie could have beaten Trump because it didn't happen. And the reason it didn't happen was he lacked the appeal to minority voters that Hillary had.  And she beat him rather handily -- 57 percent of the primary votes cast to 43 percent. 

Personally, I would think that in a Bernie-Trump race, the right wing the right wing would have painted Bernie as the revolutionary love child of Josef Stalin. Then who do those "angry rural voters" vote for?