Matt's much better at exposés than political analysis.

First, there's just a chance that people felt safe doing a protest vote for Bernie because they knew Hillary was in - i.e. "we're satisfied, but we still got our gripes". It was never as close as the press made it out to be, except in rural typically underserved communities - with a mix of rightwing crazy Bundys and anarcho-syndicalist leftists and undecideds and some people who might have some relation to the Democratic party. I.e. the grab-bag of "Independents". And yeah, early on "success" was defined as how many people showed up at an event, rather than who got the most votes, and Hillary ain't Bono nor Obama. Democracy wept...

Second, folks keep acting like Hillary's leftward leaning policies are simply pandering rather than part of who she is, both in government and her foundation, healthcare, poverty, racial & gender & LGBT issues.... She's pragmatically leftward leaning, at least domestically, and from reading (The Atlantic's?) blow-by-blow on Libya, I was reassured that it was a more considered, less gung-ho fuckup than might have been presumed.

Third, she handed 1/3 of the platform committee to Bernie - and Matt thinks she/they're ignoring the discontent and focusing just on monied interests? Raising minimum wage is high on the agenda, whatever $ value. Wage equality is also there. Fairer trade deals (or none whatsoever). Education debt relief. Environmental concerns/combating global warming. Further controls will be put on Wall Street & related, even as Glass-Steagal won't be re-enacted. All of these are firmly accepted. Likely better, more consistent corporate taxation will also follow - if they don't game the system. [As a tradeoff, Black Lives Matter got dropped of the stage, though I don't think Hillary's forgot - body cameras for cops, etc.. she keeps lists. Fracking I think it's irrelevant what they say, except for tightening pollution controls - no one's going to ban it.]

Fourth, Elizabeth Warren - there appears to be a genuine rapprochement happening between Hillary & LIz, and since Liz was the candidate progressives wanted all along - ignoring that she's a finance person and not always that liberal - many will be happy, while some others will see Warren as selling out (ignoring that Warren's not changing a whole lot, for better or worse).

Fifth, for all the talk of something new, Bernie's revolution was fueled by the same group that fired up Obama. The same kind of disgruntlements, can't be satisfied, need a revolution, etc. Obama being a good Rorschach Test for all people sucked up all their love along with those who were mainstream and won. And then the left was disappointed because they hadn't quite paid attention, and he pulled the plug on their grassroots organization. It's the same revolution that backed Bradley as the agent of change in 2000 and petulantly bashed down Gore as the establishment candidate, "the same as Bush", ignoring his embrace of new technology and unique effort in supporting the environment, along with the fact that the economy was doing well and we were on the cusp of having money for more social programs. It's the permanently peeved wing of the party/near-party with the same bashing of capitalism, anything military, etc.

Sixth, they dropped the ball on militarism, because nobody's even mentioned Obama's progress with ISIS in months, and despite the gut feeling we all have that there's too much reliance on firepower, there was no actual debate on alternatives, simply "don't do that", which leaves a huge gap in terms of how to actually deal with rather than abandon the situation in Syria, Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, China... and terrorism and government surveillance got amazingly short shrift in the discussion. I'm hoping Hillary got the message that "less is more" and a bit more modest goals is apropos, but that's just a hope, nothing the debates really nailed down.

Seventh, the GOP and Dem disgruntlement are quite different. The GOP has run its hold-no-prisoners-nor-sanity approach into a wall, so that in a field of 20 uninspiring aspirants, they settled on the least experienced and most unhinged, but by far the most entertaining. You might say part of Bernie's success was the entertainment value, along with the Youth NOW!!! branding, but the contest was about sizing and tweaking the direction, not redefining it, however many times "revolution" was mentioned.

I guess it's important for some to keep struggling for disappointment, but overall with the Trump meltdown we're in fantastic shape to even gain Congressional seats - provided the GOP doesn't manage to replace Trump with someone non-toxic in the meantime.

 As Thacker puts it, the theme of this election year was widespread anger toward both parties, and both the Trump craziness and the near-miss with Sanders should have served as a warning.

If Thacker ´s right.

But  suppose those 435 Congressional aides are right?

The current NY Review provides statistics demonstrating that the vast majority of Trump´s voters ,in fact of all Republican voters, enthusiastically support his mean spirited proposals. So we can assume they wouldn´t  be tempted to switch parties to vote for a Sanders ´ type candidate.

In fact , could it just be the case , that some portion of Trump´s projected vote total is comprised of democrats,maybe even  current Bernie supporters, who also quite like the idea banning muslims, expelling illegal immigrants, and building the ¨Wall¨. Or at least like the idea right now. 

Not the students. As always they think and talk altruistically. While they´re students. As I suppose was once the case with many of the 80% of Trump supporters who support building his imaginary War.

As for Joe or Jane Lunchpail when the LP standard of living is rising ,or at least being maintained, they can be as open hearted as the students. But not when they are falling back. They´re willing to stand still or just grow incrementally but nobody is willing to fall back. 

Suppose we somehow could give the LP´s a choice. They could have a guaranteed 1% annual improvement in their standard of living. Or they could stand pat but we´d break up the big banks, reform the primary voting process ,halt the pipeline and ban fracking.

Next question.

Michael, you may agree with Taibbi’s thesis but the Democratic Party has a much bigger blind spot – one that has been making itself blatantly obvious throughout the nomination process.  As this Politico piece describes, our party of inclusion and diversity may be in name only.