2016 Postmortem

there's a good chance that anyway Sanders could have actually had an impact on party direction would have been worthy of criticism, because given your own perspective on these issues, no influence he could have had would have actually been good for the party's direction.

From my perspective, your prescription is the most ideal to you, because ultimately it would have meant we would never have even heard about this old dude, and he would have largely gone unheeded in the Senate and Washington because we are talking about trying to influence insiders who actually work with lobbyists in order to keep their seats. Do you actually see that working out?

And because you don't see the issues Sanders is focusing on as important, you take his part as a net negative. The most damning thing to Clinton is that she was the one running but you want to give Sanders credit for her loss. And what I mean by that is far less that she was vulnerable to the criticisms that Sanders levied, and far more that she was already a damaged liability. People don't usually get the nod from the establishment when they have been so bloodied, even if the damage was unfairly incurred as most of it was by Clinton. We retire people for far less. Insisting on running with all that baggage was truly the height of hubris.

I reject that Sanders had a net negative impact. I reject that he lost us this election, but I have never been so hopeful about the possibility of politicians running for office and getting popular financial support while actually telling the truth about our system. I have never been so hopeful about the potential direction of the democratic party as I am now either. Was I destroyed election night? Fuck yes I was. Devastated. But I think we can do better than 3rd way politics and actually win elections with them.

As to your criticisms about Sanders' actual economics plans, I find the discussion a good one, and maybe in its own thread, would be worth digging into again.