Why I left the Democratic Party

Bernie Sanders did spend an lot of time complaining about the DNC during the 2016 primary. His supporters and those who are now part of the 'revolution' spend an awful lot of time dissing the democrat party as a whole.

They were cheating in the primaries and were making up lies about him to make him appear racist and sexist. He tried to play nice.

source (2016)

What lies and who told them? Source?

Even if it were true, it seems to me that would be all the more reason for 'progressive' wing of the democrat party would want to have leave the DNC. So they should be happy about the rules.

I have been reporting the lies and cheating since that primary season began, and through to the end, often several times a day. I am not about to delve into it again, just to satisfy people who did not take it seriously the first time.

Suit yourself. Just saying, Bernie Sanders thinks Hillary won fair and square. Shrugs.

I will continue, like I always have, to vote for whom I consider the best (as in closeset to my views) candidate with the best chance to beat those candidates further from my views.

If the candidate has no chance of winning, I will not waste my November vote on them.


It’s worth nothing that in the history of the world, in first-past-the-post voting elections (such as the US), there has NEVER been a sustained successful third party. Never in the history of the world.

You were wrong last time. Try to do a better job figuring out who can win. I’d prefer not to have a repeat of trump.

It is obvious that America is undergoing a significant change in our politics. Both traditional parties are imploding. Perfect timing for a better people’s party.

What he said in a news bite in the interest of harmony to defeat Trump is not necessarily true.

The Liberals held the balance of power in 2010, didn't do them much good later on their vote collapsed. We have a parliamentary system though, closest analogy would be if your speaker had executive powers and there were no presidential elections.

When you have a directly elected president it's a different ball game.

20 - 25 years ago might have been useful for Bernie

it is what just happened in Ontario

the 2 left/mod parties split the vote and conservatives slid in

it is to vomit

precisely

Martin Luther was a Catholic.
Until he read the Bible and discovered that the Catholics made **** up, and made off like bandits, swindling the decent, hardworking people who lived and died sending them money and trusting them.

Then, he told the truth on them, split them, and they were never the same again.

My hero! Just like Bernie.

So you think the New Deal is a bad idea?

I would have told him (Martin Luther) to form his own church.

I'm not arguing why Bernie can or can't run. If he chooses to enter his name in the Democrats race I think he can get in. I wish he would wash his hands of it and form a third party. It's obvious the D party goes not want anything to change, but for a few newcomers who have not been squelched yet.

Third parties in the U.S. can only succeed is they are organized from the ground up. The first example was actually a second party--The Democrats. The Democratic Party pretends that they are the party of Jefferson, but that's BS. In 1824, Andrew Jackson ran as a candidate of the Democratic-Repbulican Party, usually known as the Republicans. The Republicans of that day were, effectively, running a one party state. Jackson won the most electoral votes, and the most popular votes, but did not have 50% of either one. So the election was thrown into the House. Henry Clay, the Speaker, had run in the election, but came in fourth, so he was out of the running. Clay used his considerable political capital to throw the election to John Quincy Adams. (Adams then appointed Clay Secretary of State, and the papers dubbed it the corrupt bargain.)

Jackson was smart, much smarter than our pathetic history texts in school recognize. He had fought in the Creek War in 1813, and he used his connections after 1815 to become the Governor of Tennessee--the militia officers and the Tennessee volunteers who had followed him to New Orleans organized in the precincts and the counties, and Jackson breezed into office. When he wanted to run for the presidency again in 1828, he had already used that organizational technique in Tennessee and many, many other states. Jackson won the popular vote with a comfortable margin, and he buried Adams in the Electoral College. Adams had seen it coming and had organized his support as the National Republicans. They were doomed. Henry Clay organized the Whig Party, which became the new second party. They elected two presidents, William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, and were often a power in Congress. That would be the last realistic effort at a "third party" until the modern Republican Party came along. For all of his expressed contempt for Jackson, Clay obviously used Jackson's play book.

Political parties used the sprout like beans in the cornfield. But the next realistic attempt was the Republicans, who ran John C. Frémont in 1856. The former President, Millard Filmore, ran with the crank party, the American Party, usually referred to as the Know Nothings. Buchanan was a former Minister to Great Britain, and secured the Democratic nomination. Filmore was the last gasp of the Whigs (he had succeeded Zachary Taylor when Taylor died in office). Stephen Douglas, who has stepped aside for Buchanan, campaigned for the Democrats in Illinois in 1858, because that was how people got into the Senate in those days--Senators were appointed not elected. He succeeded in getting the Democrats into the state house, and was appointed ot the Senate, but that was the origins of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, and Lincoln unwittingly secured his own election in 1860 by his energetic attacks on Douglas as a passive supporter of slavery. In 1860, Buchanan's VP, split the Democratic Party by running as what would later be known as a Dixiecrat.

Since Lincoln, there has not been another successful third party, although several have tried. Some of that goes back to Jackson--after the 1832 election, when the Democrats took over most state houses, states began passing winner-take-all legislation for their electoral votes. That is what makes the EC pernicious in our times. The Democrats and the Republicans could bury their differences sufficiently to exclude other parties. A primary election was held in Florida in (I think it was) 1901, and in 1920, New Hampshire held the first primary election for the office of President.

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. ran on an independent ticket in 1912. He may have had a chance, until he was shot. He survived, but the effect was to split the Republican vote, and Woodrow Wilson won. (Wilson was an overt racist, and a proto-fascist. Check out the Committee on Public Information sometime, set up by Creel, Wilson's campaign manager. Creel and Wilson failed to create fascism, but not for want of trying.)

Roosevelt failed to establish his party from the ground up, so it quickly withered away. Ross Perot might have had a shot a making a successful third party, but when party members tried to write their own platform, Perot was enraged by what he saw as their lack of loyalty to their lord and master, and he withdrew his support. That third party died aborning. There has been no credible third party attempt since then. Look at Sanders--he knows what time it is. He ran as a Democrat because he knew he had no shot as an independent. Losing to Clinton, he then sulked and did nothing for the party whose nomination he had sought, and of which he had never been a member before it was convenient for him. He understood that he didn't have a shot as an independent.

No third party is going to succeed until someone builds it from the ground up, from the precinct up. It can happen fast, too. Jackson created the Democratic Party in four years time, and it had become the dominant national four years after that. Don't look for much change now, though. The primary system enshrines the two party system, and protects it. That's a hell of a steep slope, and I doubt that anyone will be able to climb it the way Jackson did in 1828, or Lincoln in 1860.

Hahaha! Somebody thrown that poor person a bone.

I know the history and so does Bernie. I believe the most likely outcome of a Bernie party is he becomes the next Ralph Nader in history. But the point is to tell the truth and try.

Sanders is a carpet-bagger. He has accomplished nothing to reform the Democratic Party, and he is just harming the party--and all because of his own, personal ambition.