Populist Reform of the Democratic Party

run by the principles that Sanders espouses than those that Clinton espouses. I voted for him in my primary. But the country is apparently not ready for that, perhaps due to a combination of political, social and economic ignorance, and just plain apathy, along with healthy doses of well-nutured hatred and fear.

I would add one more point to your many good ones, that the regular attempts to bring about political reform (progressive or otherwise) from the top down are misguided and have resulted in no meaningful change. What has been the impact of people like Ross Perot or Ralph Nader running for president on the overall landscape of elected officials in this country? Essentially nothing. People think they can reform politics in this country by running a president who is outside the two-party mainstream, and that's simply crazy. It may get them excited, but the fact remains that, even if someone like that got elected (and because of the Electoral College, president is the WORST office to run a third party/independent candidate for) it is just one person (albeit a powerful one), stacked against entrenched establishment forces at every level of government, federal, state and local. Real change needs to start from the bottom up, at the city, county and state levels, running people for offices they can actually win, and slowly changing the political landscape, one stone at a time, moving more progressive candidates slowly up the ladder, and (hopefully) producing a more aware electorate (though that may always have been a pipe dream). That's what needed to happen 35 years ago. If a movement like that had started in 1981, after Carter lost to Reagan, we might actually be somewhere now, but progressive activists and political "revolutionaries" have preferred the futile presidential shortcut (followed by fading into the background for the mid-term elections) and eschewed the hard, unglamorous work of long-term electoral change.