That's.........a pretty large ideological leap. OTOH I heard people on this board talk about how his supposed stances on NAFTA, military intervention, etc. might be populist-sounding enough to bring in a few left-wing voters (whom probably voted for President Obama in 2008/2012), which might have actually happened. I know at least one former DU member (and previous Obama voter) whom voted for Trump because she seriously believed that Hillary was a warmonger and would take us to war with Russia.

Bill Clinton and Hillary might not have been perfect (nor were they the left-wing demons that the right made them out to be), but I was continually disgusted at how the Republicans hounded and demonized them and prevented them from doing much good, which set a pattern of obstructionism that they refined and expanded for President Obama. They didn't, thankfully, get a lot of their agenda through in the 1990's and even under George W Bush, some of their worst initiatives never got signed into law but their general incompetence and misguided ideas killed a lot of Americans, ruined the economy, and has stymied progress in a lot of areas- not the least of which has been in the field of science. Because of their ongoing demonization of Hillary and embrace of Russian collusion in our electoral system, at least another 4 years of progress for our country is down the drain. The only consolation about Trump being POTUS is that he and Republicans are utterly incompetent and are only succeeding in making themselves massively unpopular in a very short amount of time.

he might launch as a desperate last-ditch maneuver. I don't *think* that he would launch a pre-emptive strike. Life's good for him and his family. Why would he jeopardize it? I've always been more worried about NK more than any other country in terms of actually attacking us, but never felt like we might actually get into a shooting war with NK until Trump came along and started.......um....rattling the sabers.

Being progressive IS being "Pro-life" (and it's time we reclaim that from people whom are really just anti-abortion). I think that the question really is, Can you be progressive and ANTI-ABORTION? And I still think that you could- I think that you can be (personally) opposed to abortion, but still support a woman's right to choose and, of course, not support legislation restricting it or attacking Planned Parenthood. If I remember correctly, our last VP candidate, Tim Kaine, was opposed to abortion, but still supported the right to choose, which I guess technically makes him "Pro-Choice" but just about everybody is really "Pro-life" in the sense that nobody is technically "Anti-Life" (and nobody is really "Pro-Abortion" either).

And for those whom complain that "Democrats don't have a plan", just gently remind them about what the Republicans have been running against and trying to repeal for the last 7 years (ACA) and that Democrats are not, in no way, shape, or form, obligated to help Republicans dismantle it.

It's almost as though Obama is still President to these people and/or still doing things from beyond (wouldn't that be great if true?). The so-called "Party of Personal Responsibility" can't- or won't- take any responsibility for ANYTHING it seems. President Obama inherited a genuine mess from GWB back in 2009 but I remember him and his team getting to work pretty much right away trying to fix the problems leftover from the previous (mis-)Administration and not spending quite so much time assigning blame and cursing his stars (unless he was being blamed for things that he shouldn't have been, which Republicans often attempted to do).

The DNC is not going to install Bernie as head of the DNC, nor are they going to anoint Bernie the next Presidential candidate. Nor are they go to adopt 100% of Bernie's agenda in the platform (which is already Bernie-heavy). And not all Democratic candidates running in every single state or every single race are going to be Bernie clones. So, what exactly does the Democratic Party/DNC need to do to make young Democrats/Bernie supporters happy/enthusiastic enough to vote for Democratic candidates next year and the year after that and so on............? There's only so much they can pander to the Bernie crowd before we might as well just call it the "Bernie Party".

I just find Sanders to mostly be about Sanders. Maybe not in an ultra-narcissistic "Trumpian" way, but I feel like some supporters have practically elevated him to godhood and are pretty much ignoring or diminishing anything that anybody else is saying or doing- and Sanders is kind of going along with it. I know that he caucuses with the Democrats and supports just about everything that I support, but I worry sometimes that he is drawing too much attention from the Democratic Party (which he is being made an unofficial representative of but isn't an official member of) and encouraging the "both sides" view that many people have of the two major political parties.

but he likes to get out there and criticize them publicly all of the time. If I was an ignorant, uninformed voter listening to Bernie criticize and I didn't particularly like Republicans, I probably wouldn't be very motivated to vote for Democrats either and might throw my vote on a third party or not vote at all. This is not me saying that the Democratic Party is perfect or above reproach, but you can talk about "warts" and problems with the party "in house" and leave it out of major campaigns that we simply can't afford to lose if we want to live long enough to see some good progressive progress in the country. Bernie shouldn't be able to have it both ways- If he wants to support the Democratic Party, fine, but he needs to keep the sniping and criticism in backrooms or with party officials. Otherwise, if he just wants to be "Independent" and be able to speak his mind about both parties, that's fine too but he shouldn't be allowed to serve the role as a de facto representative of a party he isn't even officially a member of at the same time. IMHO.

to "open the doors" of the Democratic Party to Independents. Why don't they just join the Party and call themselves Democrats? I'm a little fuzzy on what it means to be "Independent" in general and what that might actually mean to "open the doors" to them. Shouldn't we want to figure that out before we run and hold the doors open to them?