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

[RaphaelDLG]

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.

[RaphaelDLG]

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.

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.

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.

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.

The process of American politics as I see it is often pols 1) have the stance the American people want on issues 1-10 that the people pay attention to and 2) have the stance their campaign contributors want on issues 11-10,000.

The result is that things people are too ignorant to care about, like absurd tax breaks for multinationals or the commodity futures act, actually are the things that end up screwing them the most, and politicians who should have known better blame each other in a system of kabuki theater when they are both culpable (if unequally) and foolish partisan cheerleaders buy into this.

urge everyone to read books like republic, lost or Marten gilens' recent work at Princeton with an open mind, because it outlines this cesspool of a system.  

I believe that the individuals at the epicenter of this activity deserve some degree of culpability for perpetuating it rather than aggressively speaking out against it.

[RaphaelDLG]

.....

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 just wanted to add that that's why I don't go for Bernie's "revolution." The thing is, we are always evolving as a country, and it's evolution that's important. In small increments that people can handle. It's just what happens naturally.

Bernie may be a catalyst of some sort, but we don't need Bernie to make something happen that is already going to happen as we evolve and grow and continue our forward thrust.

I think revolution vs evolution is semantics, and the bottom line is that people need to get up off their asses and vote and think carefully and read and speak out.  Obviously we all do that for the most part as hyper interested members of this forum, but most people don't, and America suffers greatly.

 I don't think we should have a "revolution" in terms of becoming a communist dictatorship or even moving suddenly to the left, if that's what you mean, but we damn sure need a revolution of sorts in terms of people taking up their Democratic responsibilities to participate, and that's what Sanders is taking about, though it often gets misconstrued as some wacky tianamen square situation.

I think the country is moving to the left, but I don't think we are seeing a strong enough trend of an increase in participation - I don't think THAT desperately  needed evolution is at all inevitable.

Which is why I applaud Sanders rhetoric and hope that he now actually does something to continue what he's started.

[RaphaelDLG]

Re Virginia, I agree with most of your diagnoses.  The difference is I have less faith in those institutions to independently effect change sans pressure from outside, I.e., would FDR have done what he did without haymer, teddy without Sinclair, lbj without MLK, blah blah blah.

I think that there needs to be an awakening, a transformation of the American public, led by strong MLK type voices, from shallow, lazy, tribalistic dolts who are mostly democratically uninterested to thoughtful,fair, relentless, invested, responible, educated partcipants.  This will be an extremely difficult, multi generational cultural project.

[RaphaelDLG]

Thanks for sharing what you figure to be your observations about Hillary Clinton's primaries voters having any sort of understanding why people aren't into Hillary but are strongly supportive of Bernie Sanders.

Perhaps you will also observe that when a candidate takes hundreds of thousands in money from Wall Street and financial institutions, they expect something in return which works to their advantage (and not to yours).

Did you watch the debate between Bernie and Hillary when he was asked to name just ONE instance where Hillary compromised her vote or her action because of Wall Street or big money's influence on her.

He couldn't come up with one instance at all.

So you see, you seem to be reading something into a situation that just isn't there.

Bernie is a weak-ass debater.  He should have known that he had to prepare better for HRC.