2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I am a democrat today only because of the Bernie Sanders campaign [View all]0rganism
(23,819 posts)seriously, there's a lot of bad blood thrown around now, (imho) due mostly to the intra-party scuffling associated with the primary campaign. this is hardly DU at its most hospitable.
however, there is a big up-side to the current "civil war": the differences between priorities of economic progressives and the Democratic party establishment are being directly highlighted. as a result of the Republican dysfunction, it is quite likely that the Democratic party can achieve a decade or more of dominance and become "the" de facto centrist party by absorbing some key players and principles from the dying GOP. this suggests a socially liberal, economically moderate (the "Bernie wing" of the party will have a lot to do with keeping this from tilting too far to starboard) and hawkish foreign policy positions -- similar to how it is now, but more intense due to tensions arising between the influx of opportunistic tax haters and Sanders' priority planks (which will likely be in the party platform after the convention). the big losers will be the hardcore social conservatives, who have cast their lots with Trump or Cruz, and for their efforts will inherit a broken shell of a political party unable to enact any of its atrocious policy positions.