The next time you are thinking about praising Bernie Sanders....

[KPN]

174. OK, will do. Bernie's the Best!

Look, Bernie can't possibly be to blame for every Democratic Party shortcoming. Heck, how can anyone take yesterday's GA6 result as anything but a victory in the first place? And yet we have the same old Bernie bashing going on as we do every day here at DU despite that. Them's some pretty recalcitrant grudges!

Someone up-thread mentioned that maybe Bernie's absence was strategic, like the DNCs absence in Kansas (well, according to the DNC the Kansas thing was strategic). Maybe so.

Or maybe it's a tit-for-tat thing? Who the hell knows. I'm just amazed that anyone would even think to ask where was Bernie yesterday. It strikes me as rather vigilante-like.

So, what about the Kansas thing? Bernie went there. What do you all think about this:
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While Thompson managed to raise $292,000 without his party’s help, 95% of which came from individuals, neither the DNC, DCCC, nor even the Kansas Democratic Party would help him grow that total in any substantial way. His campaign requested $20,000 from the state Democratic Party and was denied.
…
The national Democratic Party gave him nothing until the day before the election, when it graced him with some live calls and robo-calls. He lost by seven percentage points. …

In an interview with The Washington Post, Perez confirmed the DNC would not be giving Thompson a dime. “We can make progress in Kansas,” he said. “There are thousands of elections every year, though. Can we invest in all of them? That would require a major increase in funds.” Fact check: the DNC has a fund just for Congressional elections, of which there are just ten this year.
…

In defending their decision, party mouthpieces have taken the ... line that giving Thompson money would have actually hurt his chances of winning, because then everyone would have known he’s a Democrat, and Kansans hate Democrats. ...

“You do not get to the single digits in a district like this if you’re a nationalized Democrat,” DCCC communications director Meredith Kelly told The Huffington Post. “End of story. That’s just the way it is. There are just certain races where it is not helpful to be attached to the national D.C. Democrats.”

Nobody must have told Kelly that Thompson was already attached to the “national DC Democrats” by virtue of being in their party, a fact Estes (Thompson's opponent) was happy to exploit in an attack ad ... “The liberals are trying to steal this election by supporting a Bernie Sanders backed lawyer, because they know he will vote how Nancy Pelosi tells him to,” he claimed.

One person the party does not think will be hurt by their help is Jon Ossoff, who is running in a similarly red, but much wealthier, district in Georgia. To date, the DNC has raised some $8.3m for him and has committed to sending nine field staffers to organize on-the-ground efforts.

Although he is young, he’s an acolyte of the Democratic establishment, having worked for Representatives John Lewis and Hank Johnson, and he endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primary.
...
Democrats think Ossoff is just the guy to bring his affluent suburban district back into the fold. (Clearly, losing a national election was not enough to reverse course on that most doomed of 2016 strategies: trading blue collar whites for wealthy, suburban ones.)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/13/progressive-democratic-candidates-james-thompson-loss