Senator Sanders keeps going out of his way to insist that he's not a member of this party, thus it's a lot less legitimate than the Democrats you refer to, in your unfair categorization. They committed to the party and did what was deemed best at the time.
Sanders has chosen not to be part of the party, despite saying that of course he would be a Democrat, no one has a problem if he and his followers wish to work for their ideas, they're quite welcome to join us in the party or to work with us, but they won't accomplish anything if they're busy attacking us. His ideas are not unique and they were quite popular before him and in spite of him.
We did pretty well in 2016, despite the numerous attacks, the disinformation and the lies told to people about what the party actually is and its history. We don't need to embrace Bernie's version of the economic message, it's been our own for quite sometime, just because it doesn't use his slogans, it doesn't mean that's something different.
Our problems with Bernie is that his slogans aren't new, his ideas not unique but he insists that we sacrifice our social justice principles, our civil and human rights principles as he did when he attacked Ossoff and embraced that right wing extremist. Our war on poverty is ongoing, it's not something Bernie created, and we won't do a darn thing to advance it if we keep insisting that race and gender issues are somehow not an integral part of it.
I'm all willing to move to unity, but Bernie and his people seem to be aggressively choosing to make that difficult. To the point that he's handing ammunition to the Republicans to use against us and creating a narrative of division that simply isn't true. We certainly are ALL needed, even those of us that Bernie and his supporters keep telling to sit down, shut up and move to the back of the line.
We are people, even the women and the POC and the immigrants that Bernie and his peeps get all confused, and if unity is the goal and Bernie and his people wish to unite and help us achieve the goals of our party, and not get all bogged down in taking credit and bullying everyone, then he and his followers are welcome.
We will not gain any ground if we allow this divisiveness to continue, Democratic ideals and the Democratic party doesn't need to be remade in anyone's image, and it's not exactly unifying to keep demanding this of us.
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