Here is what I dont understand. And I really want to.

[wildeyed]

115. Yeah, I hear what you are saying.

It gets heated these days. 2008 was also bad, but I don't remember it being this bad. I usually check the board once a day, look at LBN and Greatest, but I even stopped doing that for a long time. Too much bile and also boring.

If you think about it, it is ridiculous that one parties represent such a huge spectrums of views. In a parliamentary system, there are many parties representing niche groups, but they are all forced to work with other parties if they want to get anything done. And if one pisses you off or renege on a deal, you can work with someone else.

For instance, I am passionate and far-left on social justice issues and a center-left pragmatists on economic stuff. In the parliamentary system, I can be a member of the Social Justice Party. But there are not enough of us to win an election, so we might work with the Democratic Socialists to gain a majority. If they are difficult or unpleasant, no reason we would not go with the straight-up Democrats or even Business Progressives instead. They are both ok with my social justice platform, and I am ok with a variety of different economic solutions. We all get what we really want.

Sanders supporters seem to think (in general) that the ONLY progressive issue is income inequality. And I think that is a huge deal too. But my true passion is for social justice and I am waaaay more liberal than most of them on that score. I find their lack of understanding annoying. Just like they find my lack of absolute intensity on economic issues annoying. But we are forced to be together, a shotgun wedding. I dunno, if we were able to choose, we might choose each other. But there is no choice. The Republicans are so gawdawful, I can't even contemplate voting for one beyond the local level. And they are even more fractured. We are ALL overly constrained by the system.

This is a long and complicated way to say I think the two party system sucks, is outdated, and until it changes, we will have very fractious primaries. Because voters are pissed and sick of it. Sanders peeps probably agree with me 100% on that! We just disagree on the best way to go about fixing in, or, in my case, if it is even fixable (I think only modest progress is possible).

Did you watch The Wire? The 4th or 5th season is all about a gifted and passionate young politician out to clean up the mess and cronyism of the city government. And what happens next is about right. He gets change, but incremental and with big compromises and unintended results, not all good. That's politics and that's life.

In the end, we will make the shotgun marriage work. Because Hillary Clinton can give Sanders peeps more of what they want than GOP, and vice versa. We just have to beat each other up for a bit longer first