but not about yet another new party.

Bernie kept his word on everything he stated throughout his campaign. He proved that an honest public servant can raise the necessary dollars to run for POTUS. $$200-plus million is nothing to sneeze at, and it put a lot of corporate tools like $hrill on notice. The donations came from the 99% through the social networks of the 21st century: the innertubz, etc. The structure is in place to begin the process of flushing the corporate bought and paid for crooks out of all levels of government, starting at the local/bottom level. The corporate media is no longer the sole all-powerful, and only, megaphone like it was during Rayguns. Heck, I'm a Boomer, and I barely watch the boob tube anymore. I now have plenty of company especially among the young folks. When I was their age, I was an anomaly cos I like(d) books more than the tube.

The issues are there: climate change/fracking, busting national and international white collar corporate crime, wealth inequality, a badly broken infrastructure and public school system, etc., etc. Bernie's campaign trumpeted them, and millions responded. He said the solution rested with We The People, not just him. He also stated repeatedly that he would support $hrillary over tRump if that's how the primaries ended. He never gave her and the garbage she represents a full-throated endorsement. He's a devoted 74-year-old father and grandfather. tRump scares the heck out of him. I understand his position completely. I'm not voting for neither $hrill nor hairball brain. Bernie gets that and said so repeatedly.

I am a life-long Leftist/Futurist. I worked the Dean campaign back when the internet was just beginning to be the potential political game-changer it is now. I proudly worked the Bernster's campaign. I don't quite get all the complaining about Sanders being a sellout. He's not. It has always been up to We The People to take this country back. That sure hasn't changed!

I always enjoyed your diaries over at TOP/the Cyber Cesspool. I enjoy them now. Rec'd!!

while the right has tended toward organization and discipline. Both may be necessary, along with grass roots efforts.

I would bet that the rise of any successful new party in the past has been based on having an identifiable and concrete set of values and positions and effective leadership who work as "brand-makers" for those ideas and policies.

I have two reactions to that comment:

1. If you define a successful political party as one that can elect more than one US Senator and maybe even a President, the last US President from a new political party was Abraham Lincoln. His party was very successful in under a decade, so successful that it and the Democratic Party are now the two largest political parties, having squeezed every other party out of national contention.

2. Why can't an existing party that we unify behind and work for have set of positions, effective leadership and follow, and even improve upon, the "Sanders template?"* Why does the left always assume the answer is yet another brand new political party?

*I was with Sanders before he announced informally until he made clear that he would be working within the Democratic Party going forward. While I make an utterly loyal supporter, I make a really lousy fan. I saw room for improvement from the start, although I kept my mouth shut as long as I was supporting him. Then again, that may be because he didn't plan to win from the start, as a New York Times story of a few months ago claimed. I don't know whether to believe it because the NYT clearly had it in for Sanders from the start. All of establishment media, but certain outlets, such as the NYT and NPR, were particularly obvious about it.

Stereotypes aside, Obama never described himself as a liberal when he was running. However, both he and Hillary did describe their ideas as "progressive," a term the DLC loved.

He had come out for equal marriage when he first ran for the Illinois legislature, then backpedaled when he ran for President. He had managed to be absent or voted "present" on days when the Illinois legislature dealt with controversial issues.

All along, except for his early stand on equal marriage, which he recanted, he sought to be Chance Gardener, making sure each of us could imagine him to be whatever we wanted to imagine an acceptable President to be.

Not very far into his first term, he described himself as a New Democrat, also known as neoliberal. Not very far into his second term, he pointed out that his policies are those of a moderate Republican in the 1980s. However, by then, he had nothing to lose and only the willfully dense needed him to characterize his policies. (I am not sure even moderate 1980s Republicans would have put OASDI and Medicare on the table, but that's a quibble.) If anything, Obama got more liberal during his second term than he had been throughout his career. Then again, many Democrats finding it convenient to talk a liberal game when Republicans control one or both house of Congress and the Democrat no longer intends to run, so I don't know how much much stock I put in Second Term Obama.

I don't think anyone threatens Presidents or Presidents elect, though I know that has been a popular theory in some quarters since the Kennedy assassination.

While the likes of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard endorse Clinton, Jill Stein is obliged to choose Ajamu Baraka as VP.

For the past forty years "the Left" has been "constituted" by two groups:

1) Sectarians, whose membership in "the Left" is measured by their belonging to tiny "Left" vanguard parties which exclude the vast majority of the working class because said working class does not follow the party line, and:

2) Sellouts, whose membership in "the Left" is measured by their self-proclamation, their obedience to "Left" standards of etiquette, and their production of reprehensibly right-wing politics.

For a brief period of time, the Sanders campaign mixed things up so that one could feel some sort of ephemeral sense of not belonging to either category. But that window is closing now, and fast.

Sanders isn't part of any party. Being "independent" is a different thing from "belonging to the Independent Party" (of which there are fairly several, with variations in name).

In Florida? Go Green. Stein got her slot here on the ballot months ago. That's where I'm headed...

"Independent party", because there isn't one. He is just Independent.

... but what is also true is that status quo is unsustainable, for many reasons. Climate, income inequality, health care, endless war. People are asking what their government should be doing about these things. That we're somewhat working at cross purposes is clear, even from just reading this thread. But we each at least see the problem, and see different ways forward.

One thing should be painfully clear: the problems are not going away. That knocking on the establishment's door that got to about 45% (at least, that's what they tell us) on the D side this year and made Trump the R nominee ... not going to recede any time soon.