Sanders: We need to push the Democratic Party to once again be the party of the people

[Proud Liberal Dem]

89. More often than not IMHO

I've never observed them to exactly salivate over handing out money and breaks to Wall Street and wealthy corporate interests, but they often end up having to water down or compromise on legislation like PPACA in order to be able to get it through Congress due to the diverse coalitions within the Democratic Party itself and/or Republican obstructionism. Democrats in Congress seem to be constantly limited as to what they accomplish either because they often don't control one or both chambers or have the WH (or anything). We had Congress and the WH for 2 years in 1993-1994 and the Republicans held Congress for another 12 years thereafter. We had Congress for 2 years during the end of the Bush II (mis-)Administration and he vetoed most of what the Democrats passed or the Republicans filibustered it in the Senate and then we had the House and Senate for 2 more years under Obama. The Democratic House passed out lots of good legislation in 2009-2010 with Obama in the WH only to have a significant portion of it die in the Senate due to Republican filibusters and then we lost the House in 2010 and then the Senate in 2014, which, of course, made it impossible to do anything other than negotiate on Republican terms. It seems like it is really unrealistic IMHO to judge Democrats on what they can accomplish in a six year time period spread out over two different decades and what they have to do to work with when Republicans are tying their hands behind their backs.