"The current model and strategy of the Sanders wing of the Democratic party is an absolute failure."

[Jim Lane]

49. I appreciate your addressing what I actually wrote. Here are my responses.

Your first few paragraphs are about the ill-defined concept of "attacking" the Democratic Party. I say it's ill-defined because I don't see a bright line between "calling for improvement", which you admit is OK, and "attacking", which is what you attack. (Wait a minute, are you attacking Democrats who attack other Democrats because attacking Democrats is bad but you're not bad because "Mom, he started it"?) It seems to be mainly a difference of tone. I, personally, would incline to say something like "The Democratic Party should lessen its dependence on big-money donors." Others would say "The Democratic Party has become a corrupt tool of the donor class." Anyone who accepts the first statement as legitimate criticism but who rejects the second, not on its merits but for its wording, or who brands as unacceptable the very wording of the hypothetical attack on Sanders in your OP, is, IMO, exemplifying what's already become a cliché -- the snowflake. Get over it and deal with the substance. As another cliché has it, politics ain't beanbag.

You ask, "Can you be specific about these attacks {by the DLC}?" I'm not going to undertake a comprehensive history of the intraparty warfare triggered by the DLC. In a quick search, I found "Why the Democratic Party Acts The Way It Does", a review of a book by DLC founder Al From. The review quotes Bruce Babbitt, a DLC member and later a Clinton Cabinet officer, saying, "“We’re revolutionaries. We believe the Democratic Party in the last several decades has been complacent. . . ." From himself wrote that "what we hope to accomplish with the DLC is a bloodless revolution in our party." Sanders supporters who followed the defeat of 2016 by founding a group called Our Revolution are following in that tradition. On substance, I largely agree with Our Revolution and disagree with the policies the DLC pushed when it existed, but both are examples of the intra-party conflict that's inevitable in a "big tent" (OK, I promise that's my last cliché).

You conclude (your quotation from me boldfaced):

And if smears of Bernie like the ones in Hillary's book reach the point where he's finally had enough and he throws in his lot with the organizers of a new party, then no Democrat will have the ghost of a chance of winning the White House in 2020.
So Clintons comments are smears but Sanders are calling for improvement in structure and overall direction of the party.
You Just Proved My Point.

You're totally focused on personalities here. Clinton's comments aren't smears because I disagree with her about the best course for the Democratic Party. They're smears because they're misstatements of fact:

* Some can be labeled misstatements because, although no one can prove with mathematical rigor that they're false, no sensible unbiased person could believe them. I haven't read her book, either, but this charge against Bernie has been widely reported:

"His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump's 'Crooked Hillary' campaign," wrote Clinton.

Donald Trump's campaign for the Republican nomination relied heavily on personal attacks. Does she think that the guy who lit into "Crooked Ted" and "Little Marco" was suddenly going to take the high road against her in the general election? Bernie famously disdained interest in her "damn emails." His "attacks" were instead about substance. Hillary was implying that, if Bernie hadn't criticized her over the TPP and Glass-Steagall repeal, Trump would never have mentioned that the FBI was investigating her.

* Other statements in What Happened are more cut-and-dried, i.e., demonstrably false. An example cited in this video in another thread is that she apparently charged that Bernie took her ideas, on things like infrastructure and youth unemployment, and then just proposed the same thing, "only bigger." The video presents news articles showing that Bernie's proposals preceded hers. She can criticize Bernie on policy all she wants, but when she misstates facts, then some of us will say that she's spreading smears.


ETA: I just noticed your statement in the OP that "You don't see Democrats trying to primary liberal independents...." If by "liberal independents" you mean incumbent Democrats who backed Bernie, there are very few of them in the first place. One of his prominent supporters was Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Yes, she was primaried, and yes, this effort was met with effusive praise on DU.

As a side note, some DUers now denounce the idea of primary challenges to the more conservative Democrats because that money could be used against Republicans in the general. That anti-Gabbard thread includes a link to her primary challenger's Act Blue page but nobody seems to have raised the point about defeating Republicans.