re: view Bernie as some malevolent snake-oil salesman endowed with magical charisma to dupe people into finding flaws in the democratic party dependence on corporate money. If only someone would rid you of this turbulent priest, the party would be so popular. That is nuts to me on so many levels.

I agree. And I don't even like him or his program. If he's got fans, he's got every right to keep ranting his shtick until he starts losing some. And there's a reason I should understand what his fans are like just along the lines of knowledge is power.

I guess I just don't get party loyalty, never did, but I think lots more people are there now. Why the fuck should he have to tow the party line of a party he left long ago? He joined in as a favor, is how I look at it. Trump with the GOP, a whole different story. But same hijack accusations. As if its a duty for all citizens to belong to one of two parties. It's not. Some of the founders didn't think we should have any at all!

1) I see Bernie as basically any other convenient talking head for movement ideas that were dropped on Bill Bradley and other candidates in former years. I don't think he personally built the movement or was responsible for it moving, though he can communicate righteous anger much better than Bradley.

2) I largely trust Hillary, yes, even though she'll make some shockingly poor choices here or there. I think her heart's in the right place and that she's largely devoted to ideals I approve of.

3) I deal with corporations and I deal with individuals, including business development. I see the flaws and benefits in both. In 1998, Celera Genomics stepped into the race to compete with the public Human Genome Project, and decisively won with a much faster, better approach. In 2000, Bill Clinton announced that the human genome could not be patented, which largely killed Celera's stock and much of the bioengineering field. I have several takeaways - where NASA can shine as a government effort and Celera can shine as a private effort, and that in the end there are humanitarian requirements that surpass business. I saw Soros help the Eastern Bloc's transition to democracy when the West felt too tapped out to spend & wanted its "Peace Dividend". But I'm a great admirer of the Marshall Plan (which was really the Truman Plan, but Truman was smart enough to know what the chance of passing something with his name on it rather than a military hero). I admire Elon Musk, even though I know without government grants, subsidies and tax breaks, his ideas would be dead in the water, so it's a combination effort. I recognize the various sides from The Innovator's Dilemma, where the big old incumbents are sometimes able to innovate and sometimes get stymied at important junctures and replaced by young upstarts - how did Google & Twitter & Facebook & Amazon come to dominate the scene? But all of these companies, bright & innovative as they are are happy to avoid taxes through fake offshore branches, and will screw their employees in various ways given the chance, even while justifying a "don't be evil" stance.

I believe in random and non-random acts of human kindness, but don't think it a substitute for coordinated government policy and programs, just something to augment in ways that government can't reach. And I live in a place that sponsors festivals, free museum nights, excellent public transportation, along with government health care, heavily subsidized education, and a number of other services that Americans seem to cringe at - I'm all for, I think it brings society together, but I can't yet imagine to deliver that argument to the US - we seem to have decided John Locke was out of his mind.

4) I don't treat "economic progressives" with contempt - I treat people with glib unthought-out answers with contempt. There are some articles that state that $15 minimum wage can work, some that state it will damage employment and small business. I think the real answer is that it may or may not depending on the care by the politicians and local environments that help implement and receive buy-in. I.e. process matters, not just the lightbulb in someone's head. Those processes sometimes include corporations, like it or not. US health care will always involve some ugly tradeoffs, though I think Obama made too many tradeoffs. Am I a progressive or a conservativish sell-out? I think of myself as largely a practical  progressive, though possibly some of my real politik positions in trying to parse foreign relations gets me kicked out of the club. My fandom of Macron over Melenchon was part policy, part simply horserace & personality and who I thought was a Bigger Tent candidate that could bring needed inclusiveness to France & the EU rather than another partisan victory by left or right - hopefully this he does, but early days. In policy if I looked closer, I might be much more iffy. For Corbyn, it was that he simply seemed to lack direction & motivational ability, so was a poor choice around Brexit. He seemed to find his nut in the last 2 months, a bit more direction & energy, and hopefully he'll maintain that posture.

5) There are huge problems to solve - structural problems with the job market and jobs of the future and education and where people live, etc., etc., etc. Yet we keep traipsing to the past for comfort - still debating whether we should have abandoned good ol' manufacturing, coal, unions, etc. The first 2 hit a largely natural dead end, though we might have produced more close substitutes with some effort, but we didn't - we focused on the service & IT & FIRE sectors. And we cleaned up our environment quite a bit in this painfu,wages stalling pivot. Which partly includes our treatment of unions - not always the easiest friends, but friends, and treated poorly, to our detriment - who in the past handled this question of minimum wage better than street protests in general have. But they're down to a pathetic 5% or so in the private sector, so it's debating something historical mostly. Part of our meeting the future will be with channeling tech & other types of business innovations; many of them won't be and will actually work against some of these (such as Uber's basically serving both a societal benefit as well as a vampire freelance model that guarantees no benefits, dropping them on society. How do we cultivate a flexible free market that's still protected around the sidelines and goalposts?)

Grassroots - we're all grassroots - identity politics people, class warfare people, bastard ornery white people like me, folks in flyover country and on the coasts and living abroad... No political party or candidate's ever asked my opinion, but folks in Iowa and New Hampshire have microphones shoved up their butts for months like special exam month in the proctology ward (and if I were an evangelical Christian I'd have so many advocates, and if I were this or that I'd have more). But how did we miss their problems? Flint's water problems were national news, as was that township on Lake Michigan that went bankrupt and made a ward of the state, etc., along with the high profile auto bailouts in 2009/10 - how are these not known situations, heartland needs?

I've been playing Sudoku, and sometimes as I'm jotting in the numbers, it all gets too complex and I can't see any patterns. Sometimes when I write down less, it's much easier for a more important pattern to appear.

We're distracted with all these foreign engagements, security scares, appeals to patriotism/support the troops, economic & job uncertainty, continuous thieving on Wall Street, all these "lifestyle issues" the Republicans keep pushing, and an endless supply of faux scandals. It's a wonder that we can see any solutions, much less take steps to implement, but energy's overall going well, in general war's getting less, etc. But that's only a few squares in the game - there's a lot that's out of whack.