Bernie Sanders is doing exactly what he should be doing. Let's all do it

[Hortensis]

58. The thing is, people tend to choose their group to belong

to, tend to accept the leader the group chooses, and then tend to adopt the ideology and arguments of the leader. WHAT!!!??? (I didn't find learning that pleasant either.)

Appalling but as true for most on the left as on the right. Individuals vary by our degree of loyalty and obedience, and whatever, but the vast majority of us apparently follow this pattern enough to make a very strong one in large pop0ulations. And these days we're sticking with our groups for years and years.

If Sanders told you (the typical "you" in your splinter group, not you specifically) to set aside factionalism temporarily and join with the mainstream of the Democratic Party to stop the threat of authoritarian takeover from the right (just until the threat was defeated), you would. Because he's the leader, and if he put it convincingly enough that you didn't go find another. But he's not really telling you that, and we know it because we all know what he's saying and we all observe ongoing behaviors.

None of us are mindless zombies, of course. We all presumably want to stop the anti-progressive wave that threatens to permanently destroy everything we say we want to accomplish.

So, you might have asked yourselves, why haven't you found a new leader who is committed to saving progressivism in government? Only until the threat is vanquished? To save Social Security, the dream of universal healthcare, the ability to demand a police officer's name and badge number? The small group can't possibly save it on their own, right? They'd have to fight alongside the larger, even if they maintained a discrete identify.

Political psychologists could tell us in great detail why progressive followers haven't dumped their current leader in favor of another committed to fighting the right, and why mainstream Democrats don't leave their group focused on stopping the right to join you.

But it has very little to do with endangered progressive goals and everything to do with loyalty to group and leader.