Love for Democratic party has nothing do with it. Love for a political party sounds otherworldly, like something you accuse people of to caricature and dismiss them. Some people might be be more vocal in attacking their party, but they're fooling themselves with unwarranted grandeur and delusions of greater understanding if they think they're above a party that others supposedly "love." A party is what is -- a loose connection of people that find common cause on a range of issues that makes them nore natural allies than others would be. The point of politics being to actually make a difference, we choose to organize these loose connections into parties that can unite people in a larger effort, both geographically, temporally and philosophically across that range of issues, or parts of it, anyway, since in even a party of two people, there will be considerable difference of opinions.

Which brings it back around to the lessons of history. Liberals only shoot themselves in the foot when they consciously try to undermine the Democratic Party. Worse, those wounds are superficial compared to the wounds inflicted up on those who truly suffer the consequences. There was a DK diary the other day that argued that Busters are all people who are so privileged they can afford to be, because they'll have a soft landing if the Democrats lose. I think that's an ignorant view of who is in the Sanders coalition, based on the idea that Susan Sarandon represents all Busters. I know the truth is otherwise. There are folks who have little and who are driving cars that others would have replaced long ago, because they have little choice. There are plenty of people of color -- minorities who don't have the white privilege that the DK author supposes all Busters have. But, it's also true, just as it was in 2000, that the people who are checking out hoping that it will send some kind of message when Democrats lose, the most of the ones who suffer the most serious consequences will not be those leaving the Party and who claim to be doing it for "the people."

If we're true to the ethic of trying to effect progressive change, that's only going to happen by electing leaders sympathetic to that agenda -- and, except in the rarest cases, that will require working within the organization that most left-leaning people look to when they go into the voting booth and which has the resources to run thousands of candidates nationwide. I love the friends I've made in the Sanders campaign who are going off to Brand New Congress, but there's almost no way that can succeed. It will require even more money than Sanders' Presidential bid just to run candidates in each Congressional district -- and it will be far harder to raise even a fraction of the money Sanders got because he was running for President. That's without looking to state and local races, which shouldn't be ignored, either. The way to succeed in politics is to make common cause with the most allies, not to try to align yourself only with those who see the world exactly as you do. The latter tactic is guaranteed to fail because it's inimical to whole purpose of politics and political organizing. I don't love the Democratic Party, but I understand that his is hte city architecture we have to work with. It'll be far easier to simply get the votes of most Democrats than it would be to try to build an entirely new city alongside it and invite everyone to just leave their homes and start from scratch in the new city -- having to clear and pave the new roads, instead of just driving on the ones there and paying a little to help fix the potholes.

If you love your political party, it must be a very small group indeed.

But, within some margins, politics is reasonably predictable. Of course, outcomes often flip based on those margins, but not in this case. People talking about creating a rump party -- one that will be 5% or 10% of the vote. I wish I thought there was a snowball's chance in hell of doing better than that, but I don't.

And, I believe it will set back the progressive cause by decades. Maybe a century.

I get that the society is more fragmented than ever, in so many ways, culturally and politically, we're aligning ourselves with ever smaller circles. But, I think you're missing the two most salient points of this race.

First, you wrote this:

I also don't think you understand what is happening with the electorate....

Right now both parties are a small percentage of the electorate. I believe 28% Repub, 29% Dem. Independents are gaining the majority and that may well continue seeing as more and more both on the left and the right see the rigged system we're in. As Dallasdoc has said over and over again, it's no longer a matter of left v. right but of up v. down.

Sure. And yet, Hillary Clinton will have over 3 million more votes that Sanders. That's a healthy margin in a Presidential general election. In a party primary contest? It's considerable. Given the fraction that votes in a party's primary -- about 25% of the total number of votes in the the general election, it would translate into a landslide in the general. So -- if you are liberal -- what would be the point of taking the smaller slice of the liberal electorate and carve it away, to try and challenge both the other half of the liberal coalition and the conservative? Even if every state had had a semi-open primary, Clinton would still have won.

In other words, regardless of what those registration numbers tell you, the party still matters. That's still the center of gravity of the liberal coalition -- though I think the demographics of the vote suggest that in a decade or so, that may no longer be true.

In fact, if we stay within the Party, we can move that date up. A candidate who had more credibility with the Democratic base could have done even better than Sanders. And there will be pportunites to produce more candidates like that...if we stay within the coalition that exists, rather than trying to fracture it... and that's the other salient point. To wit:

Sanders came incredibly close to succeeding. If we take the longer view, this race should give progressives lots of reason to hope, rather than reason to despair. This was the best performance by a real progressive since McGovern won the nomination -- and Sanders was up against an opponent whose personal weaknesses definitely left some openings but whose starting point and whose campaign organization was more formidable than any other candidate began with. Given wehre he started and his own inherent linitations, Sanders did incredibly well. More to the point, as I argued vehemently on that other site, he's changed the discourse by reintroducing liberal ideas to the leadership. Nothing he said was a new idea, but it was never really acknowledged at that level.

In my congressional district, we elected a real progressive who will almost instantly be the most progressive member of the House. There will be more like him in years to come, as his state seat will go to another progressive, and so on and so on. The future is ours, if we embrace it. Do we need a more progressive party? Of course. But, if you're looking to create it outside of the Democratic Party, you're doing it exactly wrong.

You don't appreciate my writing with certainty? OK. I THINK you're doing it exactly wrong.