Hell, the Dem convention is being hosted by the fucking insurance industry and republican donors. Isn't that worth fighting??

Why in the world would Sanders join the Dem Party, and all he does is complain about the Democratic Establishment? He act as if he is doing a formidable thing.

That's great, but I do it to make sure my family has the resources to achieve their goals and dreams. If I piss someone off at work for not doing the right thing, thenI don't think twice about it.

at the same time going on TV criticizing the Democratic Party every chance he gets...Who does that? He is creating division and he knows it. He is not unifying anything.

party establishment, and its ties to big business. So who are the real democrats who own this infrastructure? Not me apparently?

because the party is diverse, and it includes a range of Democrats who want the party to stop tacking right on economic issues, so when you say ungrateful, who in the party is it you mean? The people at the top who are magnanimously letting him use our infrastructure?

We welcomed him with open arms -

without a thought, and every other democrat who is on the page I'm on. Unless there's something I don't know, you don't actually speak for the whole party. if on the other hand, its all just for show, and the establishment "let" Bernie use their platform, then I guess most of us don't count any way, and when we refer to the democratic party we're really only talking about the people pulling the strings.

I don't think they would consider changing it "grateful."

What I am saying is why bash the party that you are running on. It makes no sense. you're suppose to bash the other side. it sounds like Sanders is blaming his losses on the Dem. Est. and that is not the case. He raised over 168 million dollars. So money was not his problem. Voters chose Hillary.

"the other side" and not tending to our own house is good home-team rhetoric that allows our leadership to continue to be piss poor on the most important issues.

Maybe you haven't been paying attention to politics for the last 30 years, but politicians on both sides of the aisle rarely shine a light on campaign finance. They can't attack their opponents with the charge because they are taking money from the same damn interests. There's absolutely no impetus to undermine the infrastructure that has worked to put them into a place of power. Why rock that boat?

As to whether or not there is a huge machine at work trying to cater to corporate interests, thus the corporate candidates, of course there is. Yes, Bernie got all that money from small donors, and that is what it has taken to get onto the map. the party establishment wasn't going to put him there. Their corporate donors certainly weren't.

But their money and influence has gone into trying to(and successfully enough) undercut his campaign, and their money has gone into propping up Hillary's campaign. That's concentrated power. What don't you get about that? That's the few shaping the discourse for the rest of us. Yes voters chose Hillary. The establishment with the loudest voice either advocated genuinely for her, because they all know how sausage gets made, or shilled for her. Yes shilled. Look, good politics(if you want to work within the system and not change it) is being on the right side of the people who are going to accept you as on their team and otherwise reject you as an outsider. I even know first-hand of a policy maker who has donated to Sanders and Clinton, even though this person is voting for Bernie, because being on the right team is a matter of getting to play ball.

If we had gotten to really see this grand experiment at work and Bernie had been the nominee, I'm comfortable saying that the DNC would have lifted only the most token of fingers towards his election. You can't have a politician with an actual pulpit going around pointing out corruption when the finger points back at you too. The DNC would have eaten shit, but losing a Presidential bid is not as problematic as pissing off the people who butter your bread. Likely, if it had been a delegate vs super-delegate fight, the party would have taken the blight on its facade of democracy and let the super-delegates flip the election.

I make no secret of that. I'm registered under No Party Preference, and have been for the last 32 years.

GOHILLARY...off work. time to go home now

Why did we jump on an Independent turned Democrat? He was speaking our language that hasn't had a peep for decades.

Or, put differently, why Hillary is not sitting in the Republican Donor/Bush Waiting Room with her hand out. For the Left, this was no surprise. She's been a Corporate Moderate her entire career. That's why we're not fond of her.

Oh, and Hillary folk did not "welcome him with open arms". Give me a freaking break.

DNC.
Yes he is ungrateful. Where are the funds support Dems down ticket? He slaps the hands of the very people who helped him. That's ungrateful. He has used your money to campaign and buy ads he's now running out of that money too.

Who the fuck do you want us to be? What if anything do you want us to stand for? Loyalty? Fealty? What is this shit?

"I am not now, nor have I ever been, a liberal Democrat," he said in a 1985 New England Monthly

"Socialist is the political and economic philosophy I hold, not a party I run under," he explained in 1988, when he unsuccessfully ran for Congress.

When asked if he would officially join the party on April 30, 2015, when he announced his candidacy, Sanders said, "No, I am an independent who is going to be working with the —" cutting himself off mid-sentence.

He is not a Democrat, and the majority of Democrats do not want to take up his platform as is... that is why Hillary is winning.

Bernie has turned out to be a fraud.
His war record is far worse than Clinton's one vote.
He has engaged in illegal fundraising or is grossly incompetent.
He refuses to release his tax returns but screeched about transparency.
He and his supporters have waged smear campaign after smear campaign concocting conspiracies at every election not won by Sanders. Ironically his campaign has become the epitome of what he and his supporters profess to despise.

I am not for blind loyalty, many of Sanders supporters are that's why they just ignore all of his negatives.

What war record are you speaking of? Honestly, I don't think of Bernie as some untouchable. The reason I don't care about his campaign finances or his tax returns is that, unless he did something to compromise his integrity, I've got news for you, I am not picking a president to do the books. I'm picking a president to be the best compass for our nation. I trust Bernie to choose the right people to advise him, and I trust him to make the right decisions with their advice. I'm sure the books of his campaign will be sorted out, but I'm also unsurprised that something like this could happen, and I'm fairly cynical of the machine that is against not the man(give me a break people trying to make him into our messiah) but against anybody carrying a message that is disruptive to the status quo, so forgive me if I at least allow some room to entertain conspiracy theories.

This is a one time shot for Bernie. He's not going to be President. I'm okay with that. He is merely the face of a movement, and after years of uncorrupted service in the congress and senate, he is an appropriate icon for this movement. But I'm not a hero worshipper, and I'm hoping he and his message, our message, inspires others to rise up and take up that mantle.

Who pays for all these primaries? Pray tell.

What an ingrate.

Seems to me that he was the 60th vote for someone's important piece of legislation. He not only compromised on that but even made it better. I think you are the one who is ungrateful for all he has done. He has the best record of voting with the party in the House and is 8th in the Senate.

totally out of context.

--imm

Perhaps you would have preferred he do that.

Bernie is not dividing the party; the party is divided, and he has harnessed the energy of the progressive wing.

we elected the first African-American President---two times. Now we are on our way to electing the first woman President.---Yes, the Democratic Party has some issues, but i think we are doing pretty good.

How about the State houses? Doing well there, too?

This is good:

We have lost 11 governorships, 13 U.S. Senate seats, 69 House seats, and 913 state legislative seats and 30 state legislative chambers. We have lost control of both the House and Senate and no longer control the agenda

All of these loses have come in the last 6 years with a DNC under DWS.

Losing the WH would be awful but anymore of these loses, especially going into the 2020 census, would be the defacto death of the Democratic Party for decades to come.

Bernie just pointed it out.

representative . . . "

He is still doing that? Funny, when he is counting on that same establishment to overthrow the will of the people, and hand him the nomination.

Clinton had lined up her forces, and essentially prevented otehr serious contenders from entering the race before the primary even started. Promising favors, calling in favors and generally using the accumulated power of her political machine to suppress opposition to her candidacy.

And the day Sanders started running, people like that nice young man Castro started saying Bernie "has a problem" with Latinos. And others were saying he "has a problem" with women and AAs and any otehr demographic the Clinton Campaign decided would be useful.

So yeah. He has been fighting the establishment, but at least 40 percent of primary voters have supported hum in that that. And a great many others share his feelings even if they are grudgingly supporting Clinton as the defacto "pragmatic" choice.

As for the future, I hope something longer terms comes of it.But I fear the Democratic Party Establishment will try to continue to use its power and money and marketing skills to keep it tucked away in a nice little closet, only to be given lip service to the next time votes are need to beat the Big Bad GOP.

If not, why run as a Democrat. Hillary Clinton did not prevent any serious contender from entering the race-because she WAS the only serious contender in the race.

If he did not, he would have run as a third party spoiler. And probably generated a lot of support, as he did in the primary.

As for the otehr, there are numerous otehr qualified Democrats (including mainstream moderates) who could have -- and probably would have -- given it a shot if it were not for the overwhelming presence of the defacto Clinton/DLC machine.

"overwhelming presence of the defacto Clinton/DLC machine." didn't help Hillary against Obama in 2008.

Obama is amazingly talented and gifted.

He also tapped into the same desire for change that Sanders has tapped into, but he is also conventional and "insider" enough that he could also appeal to the establishment. he was tapped as a rising star ever since his famous speech....and before he announced there were regular speculation about it.

He is an AA with broad across the board appeal

....a lot of people don't like Clinton and chose her opponent...etc.

The Democratic Party is not this evil entity trying to hold people back. Hillary was and is the best candidate out of the 5 or 6 candidates according to the voters. Sanders is losing fair and square. But he seems upset and he wants to lash out at the Demo Est. that allowed him to run on their platform--Very strange..

When I refer to the Democratic Party, it is not referring to voters. It is a diverse institution.

But the DLC/Clinton Centrist faction has controlled it for far too long. And pushed it to the right, and more to a Wall St. Corporate orientation, than a truly liberal/progressive/populist party.

It's brand-name politics.

Many people I know who wound up supporting Clinton went with the "electability" meme, or the fact that she's a woman. But they also say they really admire Sanders and agree with him more than her.

And Sanders is giving her a run for the momney, whether you care to admit it or not. 40 percent (after starting with nothing) is no small potatoes.


And it was not a great sign of strength to defeat Jim Webb and Chaffee.

O'Malley could have been a strong contender, but he was positioned wrong this time around. (And also not yet ready for prime time in terms of style. But he could come back.)

The journey of a thousand li begins with one step. Lao Tsu

himself knows the rules and accepted them

what is it about Bernie that would lead you to say that?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=18676

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=24133

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=41473

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=54799

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=66172

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=112665

and I'm not from New England.

Railing against the establishment is a great way to win over the superdelegates

The fact that Sanders COULD decide to run as an Indie at ANY time, and
yet has not done that, speaks volumes; not too mention that he's already
ruled out running 3rd Party in the GE. Instead of being a "spoiler", he declared
in solidarity with the party he's been caucusing with for decades, precisely because
he's refusing to "Naderize" the 2016 election.

For his trouble, he's now being accused of being disloyal simply because
he cares passionately about preserving the party of the people, the party
of FDR, JFK, and Carter. And yes, Bernie speaks his mind & tells the truth,
and he's become an embarrassing thorn in DWS's side.

have a time component. How long to you have to be a Dem before you "count"?

This TPM reader has it right, imo.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/yep--6

I agree that the shift in the polls, though it may not prove durable, should not be dismissed out of hand. Quite possibly, we are seeing the readiness of a large swathe of white Americans to vote for literally anybody. Under these conditions, the future course taken by Bernie Sanders becomes more important than ever. His supporters, in my view, have seriously damaged Clinton, not by supporting Sanders, but by flooding social media with claims that she is corrupt. By doing so, they have amplified her negatives. Nonetheless,Clinton is still virtually certain to become the nominee. If Sanders really supports her, she should win. If he withholds real support, he greatly increases the chances of a very close election and of a political catastrophe of unfathomable dimensions.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

The influence of Big Money. The revolving door and big paydays for retired politicians ....and all the shady stuff that goes on behind the scenes behind a "progressive" facade.

No one is saying you have to like Clinton -I'm certainly not crazy about her- but to keep piling on all these amorphous buzz words like 'corrupt' and 'money' and 'big {insert enemy here}' does nothing but damage us all.

You're not in this alone. You need to see the larger picture. If you can't, maybe you should just stop talking because you're certainly doing the opposite of helping.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

People discuss.

What, everyone is supposed to zip their lips and say nothing about anything until the election is over?

Then what? "You're not supposed to undermine the President"

Nah.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

Your assumption is your fantasy. Bernie has addressed this.

He ran as a Democrat because he didn't want to divide the Democratic vote and potentially aid the Republicans.

But nice try with your spin nonsense.

It isn't a letter by your name. Bernie has been more of a Democrat for decades than Hillary EVER was.


What a bunch of NONSENSE!





.

perspective, the Republicrat Party).

Sure he is.

He might well have won that way, this year of all years. But Hillary would surely have NOT won if he had done that, regardless of how it went for him.

So be careful what you complain about. He has done the Dem party a huge favor, it might be appropriate to act as if that's understood.

But as to your last several paragraphs, they're a valid point and very well may happen.

allegiance to the party he supposedly represents. It's a great tool to help people see who he really is, and that his fake populist stance is just to get some time in the limelight.