Both sides want a steep increase in the minimum wage. Both sides want to appoint liberal judges who will protect abortion rights and marriage rights.

Both sides would love to transition to a single-payer health care system.

Both sides want to regulate Wall Street and make the tax code more re-distributive.

To me, the differences between the Bernie wing of the party and the Hillary wing of the party seem more cultural than substantive.

You're right of course. It's more about rhetoric than policy.

And Hillary caved on that one.

So I do have a hard time understanding why we have these divisions and arguments. Threads go on and on into hundreds of posts with no actual issues being discussed at all.

It has more to do with personality and political networks than issues.

but if people are at a loss, why do they claim to know the solution? The first step toward understanding something is recognizing the limits of one's knowledge.

"The first step toward understanding something is recognizing the limits of one's knowledge."

Republican lite is not the answer.

Which is why I dislike the effort to cater to white male Republican voters, to move the party away from its base toward them, and to deprioritize abortion rights and other issues important to the non-white male population. I also object to efforts to limit the franchise by replacing primaries with caucuses.

I completely agree with not catering to white male republicans. Joy Reed has been saying something along these lines. Republicans are not going to change their vote. Stop trying to get them to. What the white power structure wants is to hold on to power. They don't care about issues, they don't care about hurting people, they don't care about anything but hanging on to power. The fifties and early sixties were great. Union jobs, complete power, could lynch people if you wanted. They were great times for white men. That is the backlash vote that just occurred.

Republicans just don't give a hoot about anything but retaining power. The changing demographics are scary to them. We, progressives, don't need them. Just get the vote out and change the damn gerrymandering. I am halfway convinced there will be no midterm elections but that's another thread.

I never really thought about primaries vs caucuses so I can't speak to that.

I agree with you.

That's the key. If our candidates don't win...well...they don't win. There is no single answer for what kind of candidate will win. When it comes to congressional races, every last one of them is a local election. Who will win depends on the place they run, almost certainly.

I'm really, really lucky. I live in St. Paul, MN, and we will readily elect progressives to Congress. We have done that for a long time. We have Betty McCollum in the House and Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar in the Senate. Now, Amy's not a left-winger, but she's a solid progressive. The other two are even further to the left.

But, the congressional district on one border of mine elected Michele Bachmann more than once, and now has another arch-conservative in office in Tom Emmer. Two districts. Two completely different electorates. We've not succeeded in electing any sort of Democrat in that district for a very long time. It's possible to do so, but we keep failing to do that. We've come close, but haven't succeeded.

There's no single answer. There is only one congressional district at a time to consider. It's all local politics at that level. Sure, those districts need money, but they don't necessarily need advice from people who have no idea about the district's political leanings. Local elections need local activism and candidates who are capable of winning in that particular district. Nothing else works.

End of story.

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"You want to convince people that a certain kind of candidate is the answer to the Democrats electoral failures, win somewhere first. An argument for winability has to be based on some record of winning. Belief isn't enough. "
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That's perfect. You can include me among those who are fed up with the smears against the Democratic Party and trying to "score points" and especially the practice of trying to advance arguments that have NO EVIDENCE of success.

It isn't like this was not a very red district with little chance of winning. That is the very start of the conversation.

call for "unity". SSDD.

MT & Omaha lost. Hell, I saw it when Perriello lost too (even though he had members of team Obama, Clinton, and Sanders behind him). I was rooting for Ossoff as a Bernie guy but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed in this loss considering the truckloads of money that was sent his way.

from his leadership position or the Senate? I don't recall that.

I'll also point out the GOP also ran adds tying Ossoff to Bernie. Naturally people are ignoring those because the defeat is an opportunity to grind old axes.

Every jurisdiction and every district is different.

Run the right candidate for the electorate there.

I used to have Heath Shuler as my rep. He was a pitiful excuse for a democrat based on his voting record on many issues. But he was the best we could ever elect in this district.

But you know what? As a Democrat while he often voted the wrong way the fact that his seat help give us a majority in the House. And because we had that Majority Nancy Pelosi was in control of what bills got votes. And as a result even without his votes, because he gave us a majority, we got the ACA, the Lilly Ledbetter equal pay act and so many more great pieces of legislation passed.

Because we ran the right candidate for the district.

I do not know the solution either. Yet we can not do it alone.

At some point, accountability at the top needs to be a thing.

Not just Pelosi, but also Steny. We need leaders in the party whose districts aren't composed of a bunch of white collar millionaires with advanced degrees.

could get. He talked about economic issues, like development of biomedical, bio-tech, high tech, clean industries for the region in his ads.

He lost for several reasons. And we should examine them objectively and see what we can learn from them.

Keep in mind that it is a solidly R district (actually all of them have been) and the elections were not supposed to be close.

There is no reason to panic. And even less reason for us to be at odds with each other.

Peace

What gets a Democrat elected in, say, the Deep South probably won't play in Peoria. But get that win in each district or state. Get that D, liberal or not, sent off to Washington. Get the numbers needed en masse to correct the national agenda.