… the Democrats have always been on the side of personal freedoms – and we have never wavered away from that.

WE are the people who want to raise the minimum wage, provide affordable healthcare, protect and strengthen social safety nets. WE fight for women’s rights, minority rights, LGBT rights, better care for the disabled, better care for our vets.

And yet, we lost to a man who is AGAINST all of the above. We lost the votes of people who have had their jobs outsoured to a man who has been outsourcing jobs for decades. We lost the votes of people who thought Michelle was an unfit FLOTUS because she goes sleeveless to a man whose wife was a nude model. We lost the votes of people who claim to be “Christians” to a self-proclaimed pussy-grabber – who was touted as “chosen by God” by their “Christian” leaders.

We lost the votes of people who want someone in the WH who “knows’ their day-to-day financial struggles to a billionaire who doesn’t pay his debts to people exactly like them. We lost the votes of people who think their tax burden is too onerous to a billionaire who doesn’t pay taxes.

IOW, we lost the votes of the very people whose side we’re on, and have always been on. And it’s not like we don’t make that apparent every election.

What’s the answer to turning this around? If I knew, I wouldn’t be posting on DU – I’d be living it up in DC as the best-paid political strategist in the country.

But I have to add one thing: The constant cries of the Bernie supporters are – to put it nicely – less than helpful. I can assure there would be a lot less criticism of him and his supporters if they would stop bringing him up in every thread as though he and he alone is the great saviour of the party – and that would be the party he refuses to be a member of.

Bernie lost the primaries; he was not the nominee. It’s time people acknowledged that fact and moved on. It’s time for his supporters to recognize that his message didn’t resonate with the majority of Democrats, and that HIS loss was not the result of some vast conspiracy to silence him or his followers.

If we are to move forward at all as a party, if we are to focus on the future and any hopes of achieving anything, we must do so as a united force. In short, we can’t move forward while some Bernie supporters are clinging to our ankles yelling “but it should have been MY guy who ran, and I’m not letting anyone go anywhere until all of you acknowledge that.”

It’s time to pick a side. Either you’re with the Dems, or you’re more interested in whining about how badly done-by your preferred candidate was. It is truly sad that some people would rather re-fight the primaries ad nauseum than accept the fact that “their guy” wasn’t “THE guy”.