Obvious trolling.
Bernie understands politics. Populist politics.
Hillary did not.
Obama did but, as Trump learned from, it can be phoney and you can get away with it.
The Democratic Party is a party of the top 10%. The credentialed class. Lanyard People in today's economy. All they do is talk about 'access to' or 'opportunities for'. The language is easy to spot. Always indirect. Always some vague meriticratic language with inevitable means testing limitations.
Democrats have been the party of the credentialed professional class. The technocrats. They hate populism and have a disdain for the working class. They went to the right schools, made the right career choices, made the right life choices. They're exemplars of meritocracy.
They're also hawkish. Eternally trying to pick up votes from the right wing by running Vets and military officers as some kind of bona fides on their willingness to use state violence. To prove they have balls to the mythical moderate republicans and to signal to the world their foriegn policy approach.
Economically they are neoliberal. Pathologically preferring a 'market' oriented solution to social problems. A tax incentive as opposed to direct action thru the state with most of the benefits accruing to their 10% constituents, austerity and harsh disciplining for the rest. They brought about the largest incarceration system the world has seen and militarized the police force to enforce imposed order on the swollen working class and poor.
They treat politics as a brandind exercise and product rollout. Always trying to come up with the right and necessary ingredients of aspirational tone and a smattering of rhetoric borrowed from the left, with an appropriate dose of virtue signaling to the right and donor class. All left oriented talk is forgotten once elected.
It was not nor should it be Sanders job to reform the Democratic Party. That's not politics nor how it works, is not possible to do and is a red herring you've concocted Jeff. Instead Sanders gave voters alternative rather than embarking on some kind of mythical internal party identity loyalty and some kind of follow on reform criteria you insist must be met. Much easier and effective to offer a viable alternative to the self reinforcing party hierarchy. It sure wasn't the corporate takeover path Jeff, so where do you find evidence that it should be for the left?
In the end, Sanders addressed peoples material concerns with bold direct policy proposals. The establishment candidate, caught flat footed and unprepared for this political challenge and having nothing to counter with, reminiscent of her campaigns tactics with Obama, she fell back on dog whistles, scorn and back room dealing to clinch the nomination.
She went down to the Republican challenger who used a different and darker kind of populism. Phony populism to be sure but effective. What's ironic was the fact that the Republican Party, displaying far more democratic tendencies within it, allowed the democratic nominating process play out regardless of the outcome. Centrists Dems will never admit to this nor condemn the corruption within uthe very undemocratic Drmocratic party. Sadly ironic and one wonders how much pearl clutching and Muellar investigation hyperventilating would be going on right now if it was found out that POTUS had engaged in similar financial skulduggery with the RNC before the election.
What's telling is the willfull ability of the Democratic Party to not learn. They have committed themselves to neoliberalism and are not going back to the politics of their parents. They helped dismantle the New Deal and are not looking back nor questioning the wisdom of doing so. They represent the lanyards. The self described creative class, the 'innovators' and entrepreneurs. They have turned their backs on the losers of this Chicago economy. Labor, working class, minorities and the poor.
The hard right has been stripping them off for decades while the lanyards have been showing them the door.
It would not be possible to reform these greed heads Jeff. It not Sanders job. Your insistance that Sanders tilt at windmills by bending the knee to the lanyards is a fallacy and serve no useful purpose. He has unleashed an awareness of a different kind of politics. One the party has largely spurned and, to its horror, has been found appealing with broad popular support. It turns out laissez faire economics sucks and austerity for most has a political down side.
Instead of embracing Sanders positions the party, from its recent actions, is looking to maintain its ideological grip and is looking for some kind of Sanders killer in the race for 2020. A combination of virtue signaling to Sanders base but ideologically committed to the Lanyards as Bill, Hillary and Obama.

Last edited by chunkstyle; 01/03/19 01:39 PM.