A word of advice about controlling the Democratic Party message

[JCanete]

50. Well that's not exactly fair. He's a Presidential Candidate. He could have said "this is the only

way this can get done with me or without me" versus, "we can make this happen together," but no candidate in history has ever said, "I will not take you there! We will not make it!" I disagree with you that his loss spoke to the popularity of his message rather than lack of sufficient exposure of it in a timely enough fashion, but I don't see much reason in either of us wasting oxygen going back and forth on that.

As to the qualities you prize highest versus those I do, I accept a difference of opinion on that as well, but understand your reverence for wonkishness. I have no objections to that level of involvement on a bill, I'd just prefer the end product doesn't have a shit-load of concessions to big money.

But I keep pointing out to you that there isn't anything honest about saying you can get things passed by reaching across the aisle, simply by working with the other side. That is the canard. Saying "If we want the other side to comply, we have to all apply pressure to them in the streets," is not a lie. Whether Sanders could get enough of a movement going to do that is beyond the point. It is needed. Period.

Also, you are mixing apples and oranges. Sanders isn't an absolutist. Where there are no other options, he's never been one to outright refuse compromise. On the democratic ticket, there were options. He was giving people an option. There is no contradiction here. Saying during the passage of ACA that single payer was a non-starter is not working in the same realms of possibility that running as president on a populist message open up when it comes to energizing people and their imaginations for the nation's future. Nothing starts without demanding it. In 2009 Sanders didn't have the kind of public presence that he had while running in the GE. He didn't have a megaphone or any kind of populist movement behind him. What gave him a movement was telling people that they can demand these things. That they don't have to be the impossible dreams that they were back in 2009. Maybe next time, those dreams will be even less impossible, even less foreign to voters.

Commitment is awesome, but we just keep pushing that boulder up the hill and it keeps rolling back down, and that's because we are pushing against the gravity of the mainstream media, and instead of saying fuck this mountain, and boring a tunnel through it, we just keep trying to push it up the hill and expecting a different result the next time. How do you fight against the mainstream media if you can't expose them, and without let-up, roast them for their corporate interests? Or do you truly believe that they don't operate according to those? Its all just a ratings game and they just get wagged by the likes of the Donald?