In the "lessons learned" department, we seem to be going through major soul-searching for how the party should reinvent itself, with some major finger pointing that the Clinton campaign didn't learn from its mistakes (or "doesn't think they made any"). Fair enough, maybe still clinging to a crushing near-win, maybe just unable to adapt to modern techniques of politicking. History will be the judge.

But if we're going to wipe the slate clean of "the Clinton Dynasty" as they never quite became, the same should be done with the Bernie crew (along with Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, but they don't belong to us...). Here's why.

First, Bernie was a *worse* purveyor of data-driven nonsense than Hillary. We saw Hillary's national numbers go through 37% drops and climbs over 3 cycles of 1-2 months duration (so the total margin went from 70%+ to tied and back again). With this backdrop, and the subsequent discrediting of most polls as inaccurate from the Nov 8 results, it's rather astonishing that Bernie is back claiming that numbers 6 months before the election, before he'd even squared off with Trump one time, showed that he would have won. Presumably Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush thought so once upon a time too. We're dealing in self-delusional pseudo-science here.

Second, Bernie's big reason for staying in the race to the end in California was that he was going to take the state in a yuuuuge way, and then that not all the votes had been counted and it was rigged and he'd catch up in the end. Well, he did pretty well, but still lost by 400,000 or so votes, BUT IT DIDN'T MATTER, for the same reason it doesn't matter that Hillary will dominate the still uncounted 4 million votes in California now - it's winner-take-all, however liberal. Bernie was much weaker in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada. Hillary even beat Trump in New Hampshire, one of Bernie's in-the-pocket state, but her odds were better in Arizona. Sure, Bernie skimmed Michigan (17,000 votes) like Trump did (12-13,000), and romped in Wisconsin - but got walloped in Ohio and PA and Arizona. And on and on. (yes, Washington and New York add to the popular vote too! feel the power! but he only got 1/3 of Virginia - he would have got hammered)

Third, much of what Trump succeeded on was already vetted by Bernie and/or his followers. Bernie made a big deal in July of waiting to see if Hillary would be "indicted" by the FBI. Asking Trump if he'd concede brought up ironic thoughts of Bernie looking to be the savior if Hillary were led away in chains. "Lock her up!"??? Invented here.

Fourth, those union voters. Deserves a whole paragraph to itself. People are mystified why unions didn't get out the vote. Well, once upon a time... Hillary locked up (bad phrase, but...) 9/10ths of the union vote straight out of the gate, since she has decades-long cred with this community. (As I noted before, she wouldn't have let Rahm diss Arkansas for pushing the union label; she would have been much stronger than Obama when the unions were fighting for their lives in Wisconsin). What happened? Bernie started convincing union members that Hillary was "elitist", that she only cared about the top echelon, and not about the rank-and-file. Fair enough, if true - but then Bernie's only significant union backer, a nurse's union, had its own non-transparent vote, couldn't tell you what the exact breakdown was or who received the ballots, but "Hillary lost". And what were the core issues for a nurses union? Fracking, the Keystone pipeline, global warming... a whole slew of fav liberal issues that had nothing to do with their professional duties and concerns. So folks are trying to figure out why the unions didn't turn out the vote? Bernie's team drove them away.

Fifth, those Stein/Johnson voters. Supposedly the reason why Hillary lost was the concerns of the white rural voter. So what did Stein and Johnson and McKibben and Deborah Parker occupy themselves with the last 2 months before the "most important election in our lifetime" ™ ? The Dakota pipeline. That's right, white rural and suburban Americans are more concerned about whether a pipeline goes across Indian land somewhere in the barren Dakota landscape than unemployment, trade deals, Wall Street, pussygate, anything in the whole fucking universe except for a bizarre protest out in the middle of nowhere.... Cornel West quit the party 2 weeks after writing the platform to join Jill Stein's support team, and rather tha pushing something useful like poverty support in 2012 or retaking the streets against police brutality towards blacks, he just kinda... disappeared. Okay, James Zogby full-throatedly still backed Hillary after losing the Nov 8 winning position of "condemning Israel". Keith Ellison was a good advocate. But 3 given favors proved to be regular putzes.

And it must be mentioned that what Bernie brought to the table himself didn't clarify things a lot. He ran against Obamacare, pushing his own idealistic unreachable "single payer health care", despite the public's antipathy to what they'd been given the prior 6 years (and leading into the disaster when Obama had to announce 25% increases just 2 weeks before election day). Free education may have resonated with millennials, but it doubtlessly provoked envy and scorn among working class voters who didn't have the luxury of 4 years to fuck off in school, "free" or not.

And then there's his contribution to the black vote - after designating southern votes as useless, it's pretty amazing that Georgia and North Carolina and Florida were in play as much as they were, especially after state officials' successful efforts to marginalize and restrict black voting by closing up to 85% of polling places, kicking blacks off the voting rolls, threatening to show up and challenge minority voters, along with the chaos of the recent hurricane.

Everybody's asking the Clinton team to go through a learning experience, to examine all their mistakes. Fair enough - Bill and others have noted the inability to provide a succinct visionary message instead of long-winded policy and GOTV tactics and reliance on big data over the human touch. But where's the Bernie team's come-to-Jesus moment, their facing the realities of what they've sown, what they've reaped. A 74-year-old geezer has declared a 69-year-old geezer out of touch for millennials. But at the end of the day, American voters were voting *more* conservatism - and all Bernie was offering was a yuuuge push to the left. Great for human touch, awful for getting elected in America, at least between the coasts. Some perverse souls are even suggesting that Hillary needed to be tested more, as if getting beat up would have made her a better candidate and HELPED THE PARTY PULL A HAT TRICK.

That's right, boys and girls - once upon a time we dreamed of down-ticket successes. And what's needed for that? Money. And a pivot. But for every dollar raised, Hillary was put $2 in the hole with scorn. Yes, fundraising is hard, and it's nice not to have to suck up to the big money guys. But reality check - a convinced Facebook supporter put up $25 million. Soros put up another $25 million. Bloomberg split his money between Republican and Democratic gun safety candidates, but it largely helped. And she outraised those millions of $2700 contributors - and of course had a pretty respectable small donor showing. But meanwhile Trump got free advertising, and the post-Citizens United money bomb - originally intended to kill off Hillary in 2008 - got its late moment tsunami in the last 2 weeks as well. What was Bernie's position? "Money is bad". Well not if spent on Michigan and Wisconsin and more Hispanic GOTV in Florida and Arizona.

To be fair, Bernie did campaign for Hillary in the Rust Belt states. I'm glad he came out at the end of September, early October - but it was way late, long long long after the convention. And he lost half of his followers in the process after he finally endorsed her, making us wonder how much was even with him and how much was just the normal far left politics that threw their support behind Bradley, Nader and whoever else they see as throwing a stinkbomb into the works.

In case you think I'm being a curmudgeon, I'm all for bringing Michael Moore back into our leadership and accepted Democratic political figures. How he got sidelined, I don't quite know (ok, I have my guesses), but he's always a useful figure to have in the film and ideas world. Not perfect, but always helpful, earnest, an ally.

[note: expect a number of updates

oh crap - like Bernie's "it was all rigged" that was a perfect setup for Trump and excused Wikileaks drip-by-drip storm that exposed amazingly NOTHING (imagine if someone went through *your* emails and blogposts line by line), along with this clarifying article from Eichenwald (poor taste Nazi jokes here =>  ) which finally explains among other issues that the DNC is a relatively minor, defanged, pithy organization that begs for its supper and influences little - can you tell the difference between the DNC and DCCC? Thought not. What about the ethics of stealing emails and then slowly leaking vs a traditional dump? Yep, a major gap in modern ethics - from those on the left, from the media, from almost everyone.]

ETA - even the "voting your uterus/vagina" meme got us marginally immune to hearing about the pussy from candidates in "pussygate" - once a movement's reduced to anatomy, might as well grab the "tiger" and run with it, no? Special callout to Susan Sarandon here, but there were many many others. So much for grrrrl power.

Bernie released only one year of taxes - Donald trumped him with 0. Fair is fair, no?

As I noted in the News, over 50% of Cubans are still against rapprochement with Castro. Think that endeared Florida Hispanics to Obama and Hillary and increased her turnout? Did you ever stop and think about it before?

Bernie condemned "superpredator" as a "racist" term during the primaries, but here he is back when he voted for the crime bill:

It is my firm belief that clearly, there are people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them.

but the damage was done a significant portion of black males are reluctant to vote for her, and every bit counts.

Did Bernie's anti-coal/anti-fossil fuel message win over W. Va voters, or were they just sending a protest message to Obama?  (along with Hillary's misquote over coal) and who would they have voted for in November, a no regulations guy or an anti-coal guy?

And here's Bernie backer Susan Sarandon back in May speculating over Hillary having "Health Issues". Boy, what a pain the ass she's been. The left lines 'em up, the right knocks 'em down. Thanks, guys. Trump just has to follow your lead. But if you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose. That's what bothers me about this supposed movement - it's based on much of nothing.