Bernie reminds Third Way/DNC/old-DLC folks that they aren't real Democrats any more...

[islandmkl]

and they don't like it.

The phenomenon of Bernie's run so far is not an insurgency against the established power structure of the Democratic Party which has guided the Party farther right, moving away from the center and as far from the left as it could manage...

it is an AWAKENING of the traditional base of the Democratic Party, the liberal progressive base that has been triangulated out of both power and effectiveness since 1988. The strangulation of fundamental ideals, the replacing of broad-based social program involvement with corporate relationships, the pursuit of money to fuel more money-gathering, the lack of support for progressive Party candidates to the point of supporting (actively) Republican candidates, the attempt to minimize broad participation in the Party to strengthen the TW/DNC hold on the direction of the party while weakening the access of a great deal of the base to the corridors of Party leadership, and on and on...

It was a massive move to the right, pushing even the Republicans rightward with its pressure...and now it has pushed too far...the Party has outrun its true base and finds itself defending what 30 years ago would have been conservative Republican positions, running candidates mirroring RW candidates of that era, losing elections because Americans don't want to choose between two Republicans (one an R and one a D) when they can just as easily choose the real deal.

There is a lot of pent-up frustration within the Party that the leaders have ignored...and could afford to ignore as long as nothing changed and nobody rocked the boat. Well...somebody stood up in the boat...somebody who rowed along with all the Democrats for over 25 years and finally saw that he would try to turn the boat around...

Bernie may not have registered as a Democrat until lately...I submit that you will have to search far and wide to find a better Democrat today...any criticism Bernie has directed at Party leadership (BHO included) is based on principles that he knows the Party is both moving away from and compromising...

Those hung up on 'when' are either too removed from the pulse of a great deal of the Party...or were not around when it was the DEMOCRATIC PARTY of FDR, TRUMAN, JFK, RFK, even LBJ, Carter....and to attack his criticism of certain aspects of Democratic leadership as a 'problem' is to be in the greatest form of denial...denying that the leadership has taken the Party astray, followed principles of money and power and left that great mass of people that built it behind, that the 'new' Party is not Democratic at all...and that there are those who believe in the Democratic Party, more than they believe in Bernie Sanders, and what it has historically stood for (and against) and want to put THAT Democratic Party back together...