2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Why would any liberal support Hillary over Bernie? [View all]stevenleser
(32,886 posts)due to redistricting, anything transformative from a progressive standpoint cannot be delivered until the next President elected in 2024. If we are lucky, and we elect Democratic state representative majorities in a bunch more states, we can control redistricting after 2020 and win both houses in the November 2022 election. Even that might be wishful thinking since Democrats do not do well in midterm elections with an incumbent Democratic President as we have seen twice with President Obama.
But the President we elect in 2016, if we are lucky that it is a Democrat, and we are lucky enough to re-elect them, will be in the lame duck portion of their second term starting in 2023 so even if we get a completely Democratic congress, unless we have a filibuster proof majority in the senate, they will not have enough juice to get a whole lot done then either.
So all of this stuff that Sanders is talking about is stuff he can't deliver and he knows it, he mentioned in one of the last things he talked about that it would be "difficult getting it through the Republican congress", ya, difficult. Boehner and the Republican House will stop everything.
The next 8 years are about keeping the Republicans from electing a President who would roll a bunch of stuff back and nominate conservative justices. But we arent getting much of anything in the way of juicy policy changes.
Given that, the entire effort for Sanders is a colossal waste of time, and a risk totally not worth taking to take down the strong candidate that we have.