What if Hillary doesn't get a "Bernie Bounce"?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Then f-ck Bernie Sanders to hell and back.

He's already gotta be one of the sorest losers I've ever seen, and the way he's built up this fantasy around his militant supporters who are unable to take no for an answer is just crazy. And it's also why the Republicans are in such a mess: The base has been reassured time and time again that impossible things can be accomplished. The Democratic Party does not need that, or the right will keep winning and winning and winning some more.

Long story short, this guy has hugely worn out his welcome.

This, 100%. The type of partisanship he's encouraging reminds me of the tea party. In the long run, if infusing the progressive wing with an inability to compromise and a divorcement from facts is his main contribution once all the dust is cleared, he will have left the Democratic Party worse off because of it. He's not the right person to implement any of his proposed policies, and many of them should be left on the cutting room floor to begin with.

For a lot of Sanders supporters, "the Democratic Party" can go stuff itself - from their perspective, they've been screwed for decades (if not their whole lifetime by the Democratic Party. Their quite rational goal is what the see as a better nation or government, or at least a better nation and government for themselves and people like them.

"The Democratic Party" has burned much its credibility over the Clinton and Obama terms. The whine that something is "bad for the Party" when The Party's chief function seems to be servicing the 1% will have exactly as much impact on the election as Hillary attacking Trump for supporting the 2nd amendment.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

For a lot of Sanders supporters, "the Democratic Party" can go stuff itself - from their perspective, they've been screwed for decades (if not their whole lifetime by the Democratic Party. Their quite rational goal is what the see as a better nation or government, or at least a better nation and government for themselves and people like them.

"The Democratic Party" has burned much its credibility over the Clinton and Obama terms. The whine that something is "bad for the Party" when The Party's chief function seems to be servicing the 1% will have exactly as much impact on the election as Hillary attacking Trump for supporting the 2nd amendment.

Ugh, that argument is such tripe. Obama did what he could, and taxes on high earners did go up under him. With Republicans in control of the House, anything more significant was out of the question. As for Clinton, say what you want about him, but an electorate trending conservative from the 70s+ was what resulted in his centrist approach. The people didn't want New Deal/liberal presidents, and the people (at the time, anyway) were clearly OK with what Clinton was supporting, given his constant huge approval ratings. The fact is, Clinton revived the Democratic party after years of defeats and marginalization. They moved right to win elections again, not to screw people.

If these people think Obama also completely sold them out, then they will never be satisfied, plain and simple. They have completely unrealistic expectations given the current situation, and unfortunately out of only two major political parties, the Democratic party is the only one who will come close to helping them out right now.

America has been trending left for years now, and it won't be long before we are back to having governing majorities where we can actually make progress on the issues these people care about. They just need to hang in there. After all, it's not the Democratic party's fault that the bulk of the American electorate swung rightwards for decades and only began swinging back fully under Obama.

"Whaaaa! It's not The Party's fault! The mean old Republicans wouldn't let us do anything!

"Just ignore the wars, the massive un-prosecuted criminal behavior in the FIRE sector and elsewhere, the sell-out to the health care industry, Obama's broken promises, revolving doors, and much, much more.

"Winning is more important than delivering. Now, shut up and quit bothering The Party - it's got a lot of grovelling at the 1% to do before it gets around to letting a little more trickle-down. We'll give you some bones in another decade or three, trust us!

"After all, what are the progressives and the poor going to do? Vote Republican?"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get Trumps.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

If the Democratic party deserves none of the blame for its 80s-00s triangulation and gobbling up of lobbyist cash in exchange for supporting deregulation/regulation blatantly supportive of big corporations, patently wasteful and immoral foreign policy, and selective tax breaks for big corporations, because those shifts in policy were all due to the pressures from voters, then they also deserve absolutely no credit or loyalty now that the pendulum is swinging backward.

No, listen, I did not say they deserve no blame. I simply stated what happened and what Democrats did to get back into power. The Reagan era framed the political agenda for years and pushed power towards Republicans. Democrats took up items from that agenda to compete. Do I like that they did? No, but I understand why. The bonus of taking on positions like wholesale deregulation is that the special interest money starts flowing more readily and that perpetuates a corrupt process. I'm actually still rather sad that Democrats went that way because it's like getting hooked on heroin. Sure, it makes you feel better for now, but good luck getting away from it when your world starts imploding.

And in regards to foreign policy, Democrats have hardly been doves over any significant period of time. This isn't new, so Democrats readily deserve blame for that but unfortunately we are most likely always going to have to deal with war at one point or another. That seems baked into the American way of life at this point.

I realize I didn't explicitly assign blame but me defending them and explaining how I see it doesn't mean I'm absolving them of all blame, either.

Yeah, you're a moron if you don't have patience with the political process, you're a moron if you don't vote in every single election primary local and general and then complain, and you're probably also a moron if you don't always vote for Democrats in generals, but under your logic your hagiography of those figures is also illogical, they are merely vessels of the popular will and deserve no credit or loyalty, we deserve all the credit or blame.

My overall point(s) was more to say that Obama has been way better for liberals than almost any president since LBJ. I determine this by the effect the president has on the electorate's voting patterns as well, and not just policy, because a bad president with favorable policy can still result in voters turning against said party in the future (see: Nixon), and that hurts the goals they are working for sometimes more than short-term victories in policy (See: Bush43)

Further, blame should really be assigned in better ways. Runeghost's post ticked me off because it did not acknowledge the electorate at all. It blamed everything on the party. Millennials can't just get fed up with things one day and then justifiably blame the party for all that is wrong with the country, while conveniently ignoring some of the complex reasons things aren't getting done. The party responds to people, and the Democratic party's trajectory was set decades ago in their parent's time. Are Democrats responsible for getting themselves hooked on corporate cash? Of course. But at least acknowledge they didn't do it because one night they got together and decided to screw the people and maximize the amount they can sell out. They chose a bad strategy that led to mixed results, one being too much corporate influence. So many of my fellow Millennials don't even think about the intricacies of what led the party to this point.

I'm just tired of hearing gripes about the Democratic party from people who simply air a list of their grievances while expending approximately zero energy in trying to figure out why things are the way they are. Some issues the Democratic party deserves blame for, others they don't. This is one of the reasons why the president's party typically has trouble in midterms - People blame him for their problems, thinking that because their party is at the top, they should be able to fix things or that they are responsible for everything that goes wrong. This is hugely unfair, but it's always going to be this way and for both parties, so I digress.

Your point is taken, but I would still disagree at least somewhat, and say that while there is only so much politicians can do when the electorate is stupid, and making compromises is no bad thing, they also have a responsibility to fight to keep the overton window open in the direction of justice, not shut it closed with cynical phrases like "the days of big government are over," or pretending like the pernicious effect of campaign finance is no big deal instead of railing against it when it might not be politically expedient to do so in the short term.

You're right, but at the end of the day, after enough losses a party will change/adapt itself to begin winning again. This is the reality of our current system - A system, mind you, that would be extraordinary hard to change without the cooperation of the vast majority of voters and politicians. It's cynical for me to say, but there is a certain degree of bs we have to learn to accept, at least as we work towards a better system.

I have faith that this party is heading in a better direction, and I also understand the choices made in the past led us to a point where we had soul searching to do, but I'm not going to act it was all as simple as the party deciding one day it wants to be subservient to the 1%. The upside I see is that our generation is framed around the issues of inequality and special interest corruption, and the movements trying to enact reform and the constituencies to which they serve will eventually advance those issues once we have a governing majority again. I wish some people would have a little optimism here.

I'm not 100% on board with Sanders (though I do like him far far more than any of his fellow contenders for major party nominations), but to venture to say how I think Sanders supporters see things:

You say you "have faith that this party is heading in a better direction", but Sanders supporters look at the party and see Obama's Attorney General, headed back to a corner office in the same law firm he worked for before becoming AG, and which has as clients some of the very people he ought to have been prosecuting for lawbreaking (and didn't). They see Secretary Clinton, and her massive collection of what are, at the very least, amazingly terrible optics and tone-deaf responses.

You say that the electorate isn't taking responsibility, while the electorate is putting unheard-of levels of support, including money in the range that was previously believed to be impossible without corporate, blunder, and billionaire support, into Sanders campaign. And rather than adopting their fundraising model with glee, the response of the DNC is to ignore them, and pray that they'll go away. And that's when, from the perspective of Sanders' supporters, they're not busy trying to rig the election against them.

The DNC is perceived as the classic self-licking ice-cream cone. And there's enough truth in that depiction to be problematic. Promises of incremental change have led to the brink of disaster, and like it or not, a good chunk of voters will not accept them any longer. And I can't even say that they're wrong to reject them, given how hard the DNC seems to want to fight against change, or its supposed goals. (It's practical goal appears to be, "how much can we sell out our constituents this time?")