Progressives (Liberals)

Nader and Sanders did not elect Bush and Trump.

When Democrats learn to take responsibility for their own mistakes they might learn enough to start fixing their problems.

I suspect Trump has not enough judges stacked in the right places quite yet.

For the plan to work, he also needs to take control of the intelligence agencies and the FBI. I have no clear idea how easy or hard that may be,

but my sense is there's some internal resistance.

Olivier5 wrote:

Let’s not forget that Bernie himself supported Hillary against Trump.

Yes, it was support. Half hearted and late, but still support.

I can’t tell if you’re for/in favor of the candidates honestly declaring their plans or if you’re opposed to it.

You may remember progressive people being frustrated at Clinton’s comment about candidates needing a public vs private policy/agenda.

Right. The people who voted for them did. (Sanders voters who didn't back HRC)

maporsche wrote:

I can’t tell if you’re for/in favor of the candidates honestly declaring their plans or if you’re opposed to it.

You may remember progressive people being frustrated at Clinton’s comment about candidates needing a public vs private policy/agenda.

If the opposition is not using that option and you openly state that you intend to use it, it makes it more likely they will use it while they still can.

Can the Next Democratic Presidency Be Truly Transformative?

...But something else is required, something that both FDR and Reagan made a concerted and successful effort to accomplish. They not only moved policy, they delegitimized the other side's entire approach to governing.

Roosevelt, enabled by the crisis in which the country found itself when he was elected in 1932, not only enacted an ambitious agenda but ridiculed the conservative idea that a cautious, hands-off approach could serve the pressing needs of the country. Likewise, Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem," and laid the blame for every social ill at the feet of Democrats who were too generous toward minorities and the poor. They both understood that discrediting their opponents' approach to governing was essential to their own success.

Now ask yourself: Who among the current crop of presidential candidates looks likely to embark on a project that incorporates that idea as an essential goal?

There are a few candidates who certainly don't. It would be utterly foreign to Joe Biden, whose (soon-to-be) campaign is built on the idea that he can reach out to blue-collar white guys who like Donald Trump. Biden has no discernable policy ambitions, and it's hard to see what his presidency would accomplish apart from keeping a Republican from the White House for a while (which is not nothing, of course).

Other candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Julián Castro, or John Hickenlooper might have some good ideas of varying degrees of ambition, but haven't yet articulated anything resembling a sweeping ideological project. The only two who have are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Sanders focuses on economic inequality, while Warren has a critique of the current system that focuses on both economics and politics; she has also assembled a broad and growing set of policy proposals meant to redistribute both wealth and power.

Both share a healthy contempt for the conservative governing philosophy. It isn't that many of the other candidates don't agree, but they haven't yet put that ideological distinction at the center of their rhetoric.

Whatever reluctance they might be feeling isn't surprising, since so much of our debate condemns undue "partisanship" and encourages politicians to at least claim they want to reach across the aisle and find common ground. But Democratic voters would do well to ask themselves: What will it be like eight years from now if this candidate becomes president. Will we just reset again with another Republican and fight the same fights in the same way? Or will the country and its politics be fundamentally altered?

It isn't easy to know the answer. But asking the question is a good place to start.

Not to go too deep down the rabbit hole (OK, too late), but it might be worth pointing out here that the % of Bernie primary voters in 2016 that defected to Trump in the general election was actually smaller than the % of Hillary primary voters in 2008 that went on to vote for McCain over Obama

To belabor the obvious, like Nader's voters they are [only] singled out for resentment because the race ended up being extremely close.

But then in any election that hinges on very small margins, you can by definition identify an endless number of slices of the electorate that could've made the decisive difference if they (hadn't) switched or voted.

Clinton was the architect of her own undoing.

She was the worst possible Democrat with the worst possible strategy.

She cheated, is a warmonger and her domestic ideas were wrong.

I'm not sorry she lost.

That some of you need a scapegoat in Bernie is total bullshit.