2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Forget Sanders and Clinton for a moment. This is a symbolic schism that has been long brewing [View all]Capn Sunshine
(14,378 posts)Crack first appearing in earnest in 2004 - East coast intelligentsia ( mostly inside the beltway types) vs West Coast progressives. Dean V Kerry. After a Kerry defeat where he declined to activate a team of lawyers we had assembled to fight the theft of Ohio, which would have given him the victory, we were livid.
Fast forward to 2008. Dean's the head of DNC, 50 state strategy articulated electoral victory in the midterms. To our horror, Hillary has assembled a team that resembles completely the "lose with grace" team from Kerry's campaign. Some of the most despised operatives in the Democratic universe, together with every craven power hungry beltway sophist. My main complaint: Mark fucking Penn.
No one will listen to the California delegation. We have several conference calls. Decide to ask, no beg , no plead with Barack Obama to run.
The rest is history. That split still exists, there's still a ton of residual resentment over putting in DWS but she's OK. Hillary wisely has included us in her decision making which looked set to steamroll to the nomination. Many of the Obama partisans and funders go straight to her.
Then a nefarious plan is hatched by Karl Rove et al:
create and exploit discontent with Hillary via a constant stream of negative articles fed to MSM and a [link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us/politics/the-right-aims-at-democrats-on-social-media-to-hit-clinton.html?_r=1|plethora of bogus websites] designed to look like left leaning sites with agenda like the environment or populism.
That part is working exceedingly well. Not that Hillary needed any help creating a schism. She's still got a tone deafness one can only develop after years as a cabinet level official inside the beltway, and Bernie Sanders was always there, but FINALLY his message is resonating.
Et voila, schism city.