Progressives storm Democratic primaries

[Sophia4]

177. It wasn't just Hillary who lost.

A lot of Democratic seats have been lost since 2010.

When a Party loses so many seats and the presidency and state houses, it's time for a mighty comprehensive period of self-criticism and analysis.

We lost so much, not just in 2016, but over recent years.

It is very obvious that Democrats are making huge mistakes, not correctly judging voters' needs and wants and fears, not being willing to criticize themselves and correct the mistakes that Democrats are making.

Bernie or Bust was a symptom of what is wrong in the Democratic Party. Hillary could have addressed the concerns of Bernie or Bust. She didn't. A lot of Democratic candidates did not address those concerns. What about student loans. Biden supported a bill that eliminated the possibility of easily declaring bankruptcy on those loans I believe. Correct me if I am wrong about that. It was passed, I think maybe in 2005. And then single payer healthcare. I fully support that. It can take many forms and resemble Obamacare in many ways, but it would include everyone and the money would be taken out of paychecks. It's not necessarily government insurance. I lived in four countries that had it, and each country had a slightly different system but everyone was insured, and you could choose your doctor. At one point, I changed my primary care doctor every few months until I found the right one.

Democrats should have taken the Bernie movement as a challenge to which they should have responded. They could have unified the Party. But the Democratic Party leadership gleefully turned the Bernie movement into a bete noir and divided the Party. When you are in charge, you are responsible when things go wrong. The minority, which we are told at least and I have to believe, was the Bernie faction at maybe 44% in the primaries, something like that (I don't know the percentage). Once Hillary was nominated, she was in charge. It was up to her as the person in charge to reach out to Bernie supporters. Have we seen much indication that the leadership of the Democratic Party takes responsibility for its inability to welcome Bernie supporters back into the Party? It's about time that happen because if the Party leadership does not act on that split in the Party, it's going to be hard to win elections in the future.

The list of problems in the Democratic Party goes on and on.

Again, I'm sorry if you take this personally. But when there are so many losses at so many levels, when we have almost no say really in Congress or the White House, when so many governors and state legislatures to say nothing of the courts are Republican, not Democratic, we should admit to ourselves that we have lots too often and ask ourselves important questions.

Who do our representatives, our elected officials, really represent? That is the first, most important question.

Do the people we represent feel or believe that we represent them well?

Do they feel we represent their interests, their beliefs, their wishes?

What and who are we representing if not a majority of voters large enough to win important elections like the presidency?

Why do people feel that our candidates don't represent them or won't represent them and their interests?

There are so many fundamental questions that we need to answer before 2020.

Looks like a blue wave this year. I hope so. But we have to keep it up. The demographics and history are on our side. But maybe we in the Democratic Party have been and are doing something wrong.

Maybe it was the Russians, but if we had really huge majorities, the Russians would not be able to interfere successfully.

And here in California, I must say, when I mention the fact that my vote doesn't really count in presidential elections because of the electoral college, Democrats have no interest in changing that. So if Democrats don't care about my vote in the presidential election, what do Democrats really care about?

They don't seem to care about working people. What is the proposal of the Democratic Party for addressing employment at will and the willy-nilly firing of people for no cause in the workplaces in huge companies? What do Democrats do to represent working people who lose their jobs to artificial intelligence and new technologies? What do Democrats do to represent working people who lose their jobs because foreign products are cheaper?

The Democratic Party loses so many elections because of its internal problems.

I am reminded of the three-year-old who thinks that if she puts her hands over her ears, she won't have to go to bed on time because she won't hear her mother call her to take a bath. That's about where the leadership of the Democratic Party is at this point. Don't remind them that a failure to address the problems of voters might be behind the decline in the Party's success in elections like 2016 and preceding years.

We need to be self-critical. We need to be willing to change our Party and ourselves.