The Bernie Bashing is so counterproductive.

[mwooldri]

85. Anyone who ran in a primary election is considered to be a candidate.

Mr. Sanders was not the Democratic Party's Presidential Candidate. But he was a candidate for President. During the primaries.

Joe Biden was a Presidential Candidate. As was Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani and many more... that's just the 2012 Presidential race. All of these people at one point stood up in public and stated "I'm running for President" - and competed in a primary election. The fact that none of these people won their party's nomination for the Presidential race does not discount their status as candidates.

In any political party, there's always going to be some dissent. I find the situation with Mr. Sanders to be quite intriguing because we have a small state US Senator, who came to prominence during the 2016 election campaign, as someone who is not a full fledged member of the party with whom he caucuses with in Congress. In European politics, I'd call him a coalition partner. I'd argue and say it's not totally dissimilar to the arrangement the Christian Democratic Union has with the Christian Social Union in Germany (CSU only in Bavaria, CDU everywhere else) - and twice the leader of the smaller CSU (under a joint CDU/CSU ticket) ran for Chancellor of (West) Germany. The CDU and CSU have policy differences - enough for friction - not dissimilar to the disagreements that the Mr. Sanders and Company has with mainstream Democratic Party philosophy.

However the bad news is we need to win over middle class and working class white men back to the Democratic Party, while keeping everyone else in. There's enough White Anglo-Saxon Protestant mid & working class men that will influence enough others that if with the Republicans, will work it out to keep them in power in the horribleness that is today's Republican Party. Yes, I know they're "turkeys who voted for Thanksgiving" but if Presidents can pardon turkeys then Democrats can forgive and bring back the disaffected back into the fold.

Time to forget about the circular firing squads, and move forward. All ideas are important.