Populism need not be Right Wing. Dems can ride the wave, or be drowned by it.

[Tom Rinaldo]

I can still remember it vividly, the debates we were embroiled in during the 2016 primaries. Some hard feelings may still linger for some, but there's nothing to be gained by nursing them, in either direction. Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination. She is a fine woman and I am confident she would have made an excellent President. Bernie Sanders is a fine man and I am confident he would have made an excellent President. America, by an extremely narrow margin (in the Electoral College) made a hard right populist turn in 2016 when Trump became President. Had Bernie Sanders won the Democratic nomination that year, and had he then been elected, America instead would have made a hard left populist turn.

Maybe America wasn't ready for a left populist President in 2016. We will never know for sure. But what still stands out for me in hindsight is this: As the primaries ran their course that year, there were two candidates spanning the political spectrum who continually drew massive crowds to their campaign rallies; Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Of course mention was made in the media of the phenomena at the time, but only one of those men routinely had their rallies telecast live, virtually in full, that of course being Trump. Conventional wisdom at the time held that these men drew their mass support from different reservoirs of followers: those on the right vs those on the left, and never the twain shall meet. Except that there was ample evidence that the twain, far more often than most pundits were prepared to admit, did in fact meet.

I remember how routinely that observation was scoffed at then. Bernie Sanders, it was argued by many at the time, would not appeal to the kind of people who were being drawn to Donald Trump. A Bernie voter in the primaries, it was asserted, wouldn't then turn around and vote for Trump in the General, or vice versa.. And of course that was true in many cases, among those with strong partisan and/or ideological leanings. But how much of the electorate actually has strong partisan and/or ideological leaning at a time when registered Independents outnumber either registered Democrats or Republicans? The growing divide in America is not between left and right, it is between those who are relatively comfortable with the status quo and those who feel betrayed by it, whatever their often superficial political identification might happen to be.

The political battle line in America is increasingly defined by the question, who constitutes the elites in America? It it an expanding oligarchy of hyper wealthy increasingly powerful billionaires and their operatives who feather their own nests, or is it so called coastal cultural snobs in Hollywood and liberal universities who try to impose their radical values on everyday regular Americans? Either way, an increasing majority of Americans have come to believe that their opinions, that their needs and aspirations, simply don't matter to those who seemingly run this nation. They may use different labels to describe it, but they all believe that "the Establishment" in America doesn't give a flying f*ck about them. Hence the rise in Populism.

That's the wave that is sweeping our nation.The exploding Epstein scandal casts a spotlight on the fault lines, who can be trusted to protect ordinary Americans from the elites? Politicians on both sides can either catch the wave or be drowned by it.

[gulliver]

1. Dumb labels that people think are "smart"

Bernie might be President but for the self-label "Democratic Socialist." Populism, in the sense of people joining together to work toward the common good, is not possible while we embrace dumb, divisive, pseudo-intellectual labels like that.

Really, I've said it before, our main problems are rooted in standard human foibles like unrecognized laziness and self-indulgence. We mouth the word "whiteness," for example. And we think we are being sophisticated and "fighting for the cause." In fact though, we are hemorrhaging votes among the stronger minded of all demographies over this dumb word. It's intellectual laziness that incorrectly thinks it's smart. It's self-indulgence that thinks it is self-sacrificing and brave.

If we really want to help people, we're going to have to get serious. And it's going to feel like we're sweating and confused. It's when we feel like we have done the work and we're sure of ourselves that we have the most problems.

[JHB]

3. Very true. Most of the liberal/lefty policy points can be put in star-spangled terms, but...

...many are too wedded to their accustomed terminology to shift. They think they just need to educate the public.

They forget that this is politics: the goal is not education, it is persuasion. Education can come along or follow after, but it's not what you rely on up front.

[gulliver]

4. Real education is persuasive

But it is rare as hen's teeth in political discourse. Even the word "education," like most words these days, has been seasoned with six varieties of artificial flavoring to make it taste better and sell to different palates.

[JHB]

2. Once upon a time we had a reputation as "the party that looks out for the little guy"

That faded by a combination of RW propaganda, and a faction that really wanted to be seen as "pro-business" and being too loud about the "little guy" stuff would interfere with that.

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. Once upon a time, yes. Not so much anymore.

Once upon a time so called "little guys" had real power, with a large vibrant organized labor movement (usually) promoting their interests. Once upon a time the super rich in this country were not quite as obscenely wealthy as so many of them are today, with fewer billions to throw around to buy anything and anyone they want. Once upon a time it did not routinely cost multiple millions to run for Congress, or even for a State Rep. position.

When Democrats actually run candidates with a strong connection to the working class, they more easily are seen as true defenders of the working class. But that sort of candidate has extreme difficulty raising the money it takes to win nowadays.

[bigtree]

6. the Sanders 'revolution' never took responsibility for a Democratic presidency

...or a Democratic majority.

It just stood outside of the party as if it was an outside interest, when the party is actually a coalition of myriad concerns and interests from diverse and often disparate regions of the nation which coalesce together to advance what they agree on and work to effect the rest of their ideals.

What Sanders appeals to is a false notion that there's some other force that's preventing them from advancing their initiatives that's not the republican party.

It's messaging operates in a void where there isn't a concern for the actual numbers needed to obtain a Democratic majority (the ONLY realistic legislative vehicle for ANY of their concerns raised), but tilts against the entire system because, as I believe, they find it too hard to do the actual work of compromise, especially at the end of the primary process where it's essential that we defeat the actual barrier to all of our aims; the republican opponent.

Instead they rely on this navelgazing sophistry that the party isn't doing enough to convince THEM to do the one thing that would animate all of the democratic action they purport to pine for - show up at election day and vote for the leading Democratic candidate - and when we fall short of the votes we need, they blame the system for that fecklessness of theirs.

As a voter who makes that compromise for Democrats each and every election, I loath the apathy that masquerades as virtue and sits on its hands or uses elections to 'send a message' which only enables republicans.

And here's the thing. Sanders has never owned up to his responsibility to the ultimate fate of the party that he so opportunistically uses to drape over himself in presidential elections, but discards the minute he fails to wedge enough support away from the majority candidate (and their supporters).

If he wants to do something monumental, then take responsibility for a Democratic majority; the same way other political forces unify their own coalitions in other democracies. Don't just lead people outside of that process and deliver little in the end except apathy and pique.

Did his rallies lead people to vote for the Democratic nominee? Lead them to vote for a Democratic majority?

I ask this because, it should be clear by now that the utopia that is conjured in every instigation of his 'movements' of a transformation of the political landscape - which is a binary choice between a party that's trying to end or own us, and one that regularly advances progressive initiatives when in the majority- is an ephemeral one that doesn't last past the election cycles as generations come and go from the electorate.

Politics is transient, and our lives are more immutable than the political games people play, ostensibly on our behalf. It shouldn't be too much to ask that they take responsibility for obtaining a majority first, and argue the finer points along with the rest of us in a process that WE control as a COALITION.

The democratic system accommodates both dominance and compromise, and voters regularly tug it back and forth to achieve compromise that feels like a balance between those forces.

It doesn't make any sense to pretend as if the ideals that Sanders expresses and gets support for represent something apart from what most of the party wants in the ideal, but is actually engaged in achieving what's possible.

Likewise, if you take time to look at the polling, ALL of the issues that Democrats represent, to the exclusion of almost all of the republicans. are overwhelmingly supported by the vast majority of the country right now. So this notion that people don't believe in the government should be easily understood by that same majority as the fault of the idiot acting like a maniacal megalomaniac right in front of them who's actively taking things away from them.

So what's the political genius in trying to portray our Democratic coalition as splintered; or the efficacy in making like Sanders has a patent on progressive aspirations, apart from the actual Democrats who produce landmark progressive advancements in the majority, and are still there standing up as best they can without the tools voters neglected to provide them with to actually do more than vote 'no' on republican initiated bills.

Some people seem to think elected Democrats are there to convince THEM to show up on election day and take responsibility for a Democratic majority against a quasi-dictatorship. That's what Sanders supposed in each of his presidential runs, and he got the response he asked for; his way or the highway.

[Tom Rinaldo]

7. We've differed about Sanders for a very long time, I know.

I am a Democrat, and a former chair of our Town's Democratic Committee. I see great value in supporting a large effective institution with the heft and capacity to effect change on the national level, and the Democratic Party qualifies as that. But every individual voter has their personal life story, belief system, and reason for voting the way that they do each and every time that they vote. Less than a third of American voters identify themselves as Democrats.

Traditional, established mainstream parties throughout the western world and beyond have largely been in decline for decades as more and more so called regular voters abandon them in search of something different from the social order that they increasingly believe has failed them. Democrats need to either adjust or recede in the face of such a sustained storm. My point here has little to do with Bernie Sanders specifically. Whether you see him as a positive change element or not, his rise in popularity is symptomatic of something deeper.

[bigtree]

8. I think the concern about Democrats right now is misplaced

...and is mostly expressly uninformed in complaints as to what Democrats are actually saying and doing.

I also find concern about what we stand for as a party to be obtuse to the ridiculously stark contrast between the parties in what is almost always going to be a binary choice in elections.

Indeed, I find it extremely frustrating that the primary effort isn't to make certain that reality is understood - the reality that Democrats ALWAYS produce progressive legislative advancements in the majority which protect, defend, and enhance American lives; republicans the abject opposite.

THAT should be our main focus in our messaging; not what I view as the pretense that critics care more about these things; or are fighting for them more than people who have ALREADY fought and won elections against actual republicans to stand in the position to be able to confront them in the actual political system of legislative action.

I think more value would come in explaining to these voters the actual process of how a bill becomes law and the process in which we established a Bill of Rights and the Constitution and it's amendments; than leading them to suppose exploiting wedges in a party out of power is going to lead them to the things they say they want out of government.

Addition; not subtraction. That's the political formula to success for Democrats, or any other political enterprise.

[Tom Rinaldo]

9. I appreciate your thorough replies

I have commitments right now and can't engage further. I don't disagree with the main argument you make. For a host of reasons most voters are not as fully informed as they need to be in a democracy as to who stands with them and why. Education is not easily accomplished when most of those who might need educating don't see a real need for it. A lot depends on what breaks through for people, and Democrats need to be attuned to what does and use those openings effectively.