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Destroying the party from within.

reason.

The Dem Party has lost 10% of its base since 2008. They can rail against the voters all they want, but they can't change FACTS.

Neolib/con policies have destroyed this country, wasted the people's money on Tax Breaks for the Wealthy and on unnecessary wars.

The people know more than those in power thought they knew. That is because they are so out of touch with the people, living in their obscenely wealthy DC bubble.

They are puzzled by Bernie's popularity across the political spectrum. They should't be. But then, they would have to have cared about this country and its people.

Your OP is a good run down of what happened to our party. The Third Way infiltration in the 'nineties then known as the DLC began to turn our party into another Corporate party.

True Dems sold out, but not all of them. Though those who didn't were quickly disposed of, with MONEY.

Still I think we can take our party out of the hands of the Corporatists. And this seems like a good time to do so.

It makes me ILL - being told WHO I have to vote for and HOW I need to support them. I've also been given unsought lessons in lingual etiquette as regards our "choice". Yeah - "land of the free". Right. I get to support the "numb-inee" defined as THE choice I have mind-numbingly intimidated to support. Screw that! When sides are chosen for this match - leave me out.

I was so close after Rahm Emmanuel was out in the Obama administration. I had decided to not vote again. The hope that JFK put in me had run out. But I did vote in 2012 for the hell of it. 2016 may be the last time. Just worn out. I think a lot of people have the same feeling just tired of the crap, just want to crawl in a hole, turn on an old movie channel, and sit back and let the world pass by and never turn on anything that resembles news ever again.

the rest most likely did give up. Bernie is likely to get those Independents and to bring back many of those who had given up. Hillary as the establishment candidate is not going to get that vote.

leaning towards Bernie. I do not know if it is an attraction to Bernie or fear and running away from the R's. But a lot of the boomers are just ready to call it a day and give up.

I grew up in the time when kids walked a couple of miles by themselves to school. When no one even knew where the keys to the front and back door were. Where you played cops and robbers with cap pistols and if you pulled your gun out and fired it off at a policeman he would grab his chest and act like he was shot. From feeling as a child that I was going to be able to go into space. From feeling sad about MLK and RFK but feeling good that they removed the "whites only" and "colored" signs on everything.

It has been a hellacious ride and a lot of people are just ready to get off.

to do the right thing, help people, etc., but you know what? I'm 65 and tired. I will be getting out to vote for Bernie in the primaries, but that's it. If we end up having two corporate capitalists in the election, I truly don't care who wins. I'm too tired to care and, frankly, I have begun to think that Republican policies need to be administered by Republican presidents and Republican Congresspeople.

In addition, I have no hope that either party gives a good god damn about the environmental disasters looming. If the people in this country gripe about somebody getting $17 a week in food stamps, do we really think the country will come together over the environment?? Hell no, we won't -- it will be just more of the "every man for himself" mindset. I'm glad I will be dead, and I grieve for my kids.

positions of power in this country. Maybe it as during the Reagan era, or before that. I did read about how the Right began planning to take over decades ago and were willing to work for however long it took to do so.

After Goldwater failed seems to be when this drive to gain as much power as possible began.

They have succeeded imo. Imperial wars, Wall St control of our government, slashing of social safety nets etc.

It won't be easy turning things around, but we have to start somewhere. At least people are waking up and realizing that they have been scammed for quite a while now.

then 1940's really and started to wind down in the 70's. There are fewer and fewer people who remember the hopes and dreams of that era. When we thought that working and having a pension when we retired and helping others to get by was the common thought. We as a civilization wanted to help everyone live a better life. We as a nation wanted to help rid the world of hunger and disease and poverty.

And all that was in about 30 years. We did not think of really doing any of that before the 40's. Child labor only ended in 1938. Banking controls around the same time really.

After the 70's we see everything trying to go back to the way it was before the depression hit us.

So the Gen X'ers and Y'ers and Millennials will never really know what the dream was during that short Liberal era.

Still, there is no reason not to have a 'renaissance' or a new Period of Enlightment. Europe too went through a long history of oppression and war and Imperialism before emerging out of the dark ages and finally creating societies that were far more equal.

We are a young country by comparison. Maybe things will be speeded up more considering that everything is today compared to history.

I would like to think this is one of our 'dark ages' periods that will end, as they did everywhere else, when the People have had ENOUGH.

we have almost exceeded the length of time we were in the Liberal phase.

When you go all the way back. The U.S. was naturally a colony. This colony was not allowed by the Brits to build farming implements or much of anything. The colonists were only to import them from England. The English business people wanted a tight control over their colonists. The colony was founded to be consumers of the British markets and also workers who supplied the merchants with goods also.

I think the business class is missing those days. We see it from things like for profit prisons. Not allowing certain debt to be forgiven. etc etc.

I start getting depressed thinking about it. It is up the the young kids of today to save everyone, to bring about the changes that people have forgotten about and the young have never seen.

In my Saturday routine that is a grass roots roll with the local meet up Bernie Sanders Group, we were out in Pittsburgh again. This time, along the busy bus routes and market place that are used by both black and white people. Usually, like yesterday, I run into an Democrat who changed to an Independent for the very reasons outlined within this thread.

After we talk, they agree that it's a good thing to change parties for the upcoming primaries. Many have already. I also have a good talk (at least once in the hour and a half I'm out there) with someone who is so tired, so saddened by what we've become. I tell them to keep the faith and yesterday, we hugged.

We're coming... We have no other choice.

Perfectly accurate.
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Captures it perfectly.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are not going away and neither is the movement that we are building.

It will continue to grow either within the party of outside the party.

And this primary will determine whether the party survives at all.

If Burnie wins, there's a chance that things will go back to the way they were. The GOP is not viable, so the people who have supposedly defected to our party for that reasons will simply have to be content that we do not support their RW economics and social policies.

If Clinton wins the nomination, especially in a fashion that makes it clear she does not have majority support in the party, then enough people will leave the party that a new party will be viable. Less than 10% of the party are 3rd Way. They will be the new Naders...which is highly ironic, since he is their favorite Boogieman.

A pivital moment in history, for sure.

Here's to keeping an eye on that pendulum, and working to change.

I think the oligarchy has taken over the media and promoted their agenda only. This propaganda has taken the whole country to the far right, even among the Democrats. If any of the GOP candidates would read the 1956 Republican platform they would think that they are reading the Communist Manifesto. We need government by the People and for the People. Oh, and by the way, corporations are NOT people, my friend.

It's so annoying to have "our" party telling us to STFU and be happy with; hell AIM AT, being juuuust economically leftward of the tea-fascists and that striving for better will be a fool's errand.

it crossed the line 20 years ago when the Democratic candidate won on the backs of poor women and children, he fulfilled what Reagan could only dream of and secured another 4 years by doing it. I'll confess I did not vote for President in 1996 I couldn't stomach the thought of voting for someone who'd do that, since that time I've voted for the lessor of 2 evil's, Bernie Sanders is the first candidate in many years decades who has actually that has inspired any kind of enthusiasm for me

Nice post

I know in some states that the "Working Families Party" has been established and they cross-endorse candidates so that you'll see a candidate listed on two rows/lines and a person can mark their vote on the WFP row/line instead of the candidate's actual party row/line on the ballot as a way of voicing where his/her views lie. For me, it lets me tell a candidate in my state that my views are perhaps farther to the left than they are and that's how I'd like them to vote. WFP has started running a few of their own candidates in local elections, too.

I would love to see them grow into a full-fledged party that represents the left end of the spectrum.

I like his passion. I do not agree with him 100% on the issues but I and many others (and I would also say our country) need a big turn around. He will not be able to do this very quickly but he will at the very least start where we want it to be rather than starting from their position or very close to it. Minds change when there is a leader willing to try to make a big difference for the people.

I do not hate Hillary. I don't trust her, I don't think she would change much for the betterment of the country, I don't think she will spend enough time making absolutely certain we need to go to war and I quite frankly think the corporate rule would solidify. But I do not hate her. I think she would be better than a Republican but not enough to move us enough to change the decline we are seeing.

Good post Scootaloo.

I think running for the top office is all good, it is a national platform and gets a lot of enthusiasm and changes the frame of debate. He also could still win.

But I'm hoping, win or lose, that his campaign and/or his followers can make something permanent out of his campaign, one that will run and support other candidates, and doggedly promote a non-corporate Democratic agenda.

Steal the bug/puppy if you want it, I just found it out on the web somewhere. I always disliked the Lonix bug, but valued Loonix's posts, and want to pay tribute.

The GOP has driven everyone who isn't a tin-foil-hat-wearing, assault-rifle-wielding fool into the Democratic party. Because we are saddled with a two-party system in the U.S., it is the only alternative. So many of them have flocked to the Party, bringing with them so much cash and baggage, that they have the power to reshape the Party in their own image. Or anyway, they think they do, and recent history bears this out. They still maintain their Republican principles and their disdain for liberals and liberal principles. That the result has been a seismic Rightward shift in American politics is obvious for all to see, but anti-Left rhetoric will still be employed as is expedient, because by now it has become time-worn cliche.

-- Mal

the unions with big money donors (Financial companies). The result of their campaign was that the Democratic party has sided with the financial moneyed elite in dismantling the society built on organized labor. My point is: the republicans the call themselves democrats today are the result of a POLICY a PLAN
to filtrate and hijack the democratic party.

It was not "moderates" fleeing the radicals it was infiltrators corrupting.

"They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.”
― Malcolm X

Of course we have to elect Bernie first!

This is so true.

Like Nay, I'm old and can't give in any more. I don't think healthcare and a living wage and decent guaranteed retirement are radical or irrational. It's time to take a stand.

The people who support her have really got their hopes up and expect her to actually govern like a real Democrat. She has no intention of doing this. She's a middle of the road republican in every sense but her actual party affiliation.

Fortunately, I don't expect her to be elected. But if she is, and reverts to her corporate neolib roots, an entire generation of voters will quit the Democratic party, as well as a lot us who have been through this crap for the past two decades. The party will not survive, and she'll be out the door after a single sad, unproductive term.

Plus she is probably the most divisive and polarizing figure in American politics today. Half the electorate hates her guts and very few have any respect for her. Another scandal plagued Clinton administration will be the straw that breaks the back of the people's party.

It's been the party of the people on Wall Street. Bernie is the only hope to make it the party of the people again!

Don't miss the deadlines or Ms. Clinton sails right in.

Yes, I know Hillary now says she opposes both, but did so belatedly, and with provisional language that
can be easily explained away as needed once elected. And it's this habitually provisional character quality
that epitomizes Hillary's implausibility as a 'progressive' candidate or office holder.

Bernie is standing in the breach for US Democracy, which hangs by an alarmingly slender thread. This is
our very last chance at a nonviolent revolution, so it's imperative that we "make it happen", or else.

The American people know they are pissed, that they are getting ripped-off, that the game is rigged.
It's our job to help them see exactly who's doing the rigging and ripping-off, and to get squarely
behind the election of Bernie Sanders as President, the only candidate who's telling them the
truth about the who/why/how the rigging and the ripping-off occurs and how to do a course correction..

When Hubert Humphrey wanted to "rubber stamp" his approval for the Vietnam War.

I think he was correct.

For a nation that for decades has been on a steady diet of corporate news, think tank talking points and career politicians wholly dependent on going along with Wall St games to get along, the fact we are still managing to hold on to a meager thread of reality, of honesty, is a positive.

One thing is for sure, the more wealth & power Wall St accumulates, the ever more powerful the facade will appear and the ever harder the lurch rightward will continue.