2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: The Democratic Party has proven what a gutless mess it has become [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Some personality types are naturally more open- and broad-minded and accepting of others and their opinions. Some are closed and tend to be hostile to those who aren't "with them."
Some tend to be honest overall, even in evaluating unpleasant truths. Some rush for lies to protect their beliefs and fend off unpleasant truths.
Some are calm under pressure and gracious toward opponents. Some get rattled and angry under pressure and behave badly toward opponents.
We all need to emulate the behavior of people who behave well. Pretending everyone behaves badly is just a way to try to excuse bad behavior.
The "purist" stuff goes somewhere I never did; I speak only of people on this forum and complaints about berners I read in online articles.
I'm glad to know you do believe moderate liberals are pulling the same direction as Bernie. That's a good sign for the future.
A big BUT, though: The notion of many berners that "corporatist" influences are something that we could just just get rid of if moderate liberals would only get on board is completely mistaken.
Corporate and plutocrat power is enormous and extremely well entrenched.
A hard truth that makes nonsense of the notion that we could just to a "hard-left" if we wanted is that half the nation is conservative in ideology and personality and is pulling strongly right; that includes many minority members of the DemParty. I don't know why so many berners refuse to acknowledge that simple truth.
Although many conservatives are finally realizing they've been screwed by their right-wing leaders, they still also believe that Democrats have caused most of the nation's troubles. That belief that they must save their nation from us has, for over 30 years now, made it easy for right-wing manipulators to both move them farther right and to persuade them to vote in any way they claim "will stop the Democrats."
They have become very well trained attack dogs, and the inculcated conviction that they must use their superior morality and judgement to save America from us is the ring in their noses (I know, but attack cow didn't sound right). You've probably noticed that Rush has always started most topics with some variation of, "Folks, you won't believe what the Democrats are up to now!" That's all his viewers ever need to hear to know that they are against whatever comes after. The same for all the other right-wing ring-pullers. If we're for it, there must be something wrong with it.
Right-leaning "independents" are little better. Come election time most have reliably voted for GOP candidates right down the ballot -- candidates that first have to be acceptable to the extremist GOP base. This election may finally be somewhat different, but don't expect a lot of right-leaners to vote for Bernie or Hillary. It's not going to happen.