Reading all of the scuttlebutt over Clinton's book and re-hashing the reasons she lost has left me with the notion that the movers and shakers in the democratic party still don't get it.
Sadly, they are like the republicans in ways they should NOT be and not like them in ways they SHOULD be.
Clinton laments that Sanders "ran for the nomination not to help the (democratic) party but to 'disrupt it.'" Since when is it a candidate's responsibility to help the "party?" In that it is obvious she wanted voters who lean left to act like the typical RWNJ voter who votes for nothing more than the little "r" next to the name.
Where we absolutely have to resemble the other party is in how we speak, act and campaign. It is all about getting the right people in there. The republicans have have been running on a very narrow focus of scapegoating and scaring voters for a long time now and the one who scares the most people seems to be the one who comes out on top.
Clinton decries the fact that Sanders chose not to spend much time focusing on "immigration, reproductive rights, racial justice and gun safety." She is still blind. We do not need democrats to run on 275 different identity politics platforms. The party elders better recognize the fact the anyone who did not vote for trump for deplorable reasons voted for him because they bought his phony economic populism.
Sanders staying power during his campaign was because of his economic populism. The American people have shown they are ready for a president who embraces this sort of economic populism. Sanders articulated a vision that can win. Where he fell short -- and is still falling short -- is on the details. Unlike republicans, democratic voters do like to see the nuts and bolts. We're actually able to think and process much more effectively than most republican voters.
The vast, vast majority of voters are working people. In other words if we quit working, we quit eating, tomorrow, next week or next month. In that huge group of people are blacks, whites, young, old, gay, straight or somewhere on a long spectrum. There are atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Baptists, Jews and Catholics. There are Juggalos, Judy Collins fans, Phil Collins fans and people who worship on the alter of KISS, Judas Priest and AC/DC. But what we ALL have in common is we need that paycheck. If you want to unite voters, unite them around that paycheck. When democrats start focusing on that, they will start winning races. And really, don't Sanders (and virtually every other non-republican elected official you can name) views on the other common progressive issues already mirror yours much more than trump's?
If my neighbor hates gays and Muslims I might not be able to change his heart, but as long as he can feed his family we have to worry a lot less about him scapegoating people who are not like him in those kinds of ways and falling for some politician who tells him he needs to fear those people for any reason.