BREAKING: Bernie Sanders Lost

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. No, I haven't, and I see no reason to rehash all this.

What the Democratic party needs to do is carefully assess everything, including errors by the candidate, her campaign and the DNC, regardless of whose feathers might be ruffled. There were many factors contributing to this loss, not the least of which was their apparent failure to notice that Trump was making inroads in areas that were once Democratic strongholds. About the only person who noticed there was a problem and predicted the Trump win was Michael Moore, who was dismissed as a crackpot, both by us on DU and by the Dem PTBs.

Hillary had been the subject of all kinds of right-wing crap for years, and the crap was unfair and untrue, but she didn't address it and didn't defend herself. It reminded me of Kerry and the Swiftboat assholes - he and his campaign chose to ignore the falsehoods and hope they'd go away, instead of addressing them head-on - a terrible mistake, because it let the GOP demean his military service with no rebuttal. Why didn't Hillary talk about the fact that eight Benghazi hearings revealed no wrongdoing on her part, for example? I don't know how much effect this would have made, but her campaign spent most of its energy beating up on Trump, apparently not noticing that what we liberals regarded as faults were actually things the right-wingers liked. They liked the bragging and the insults and the threats because they thought it was proof he was "strong." He conned them into believing he would do something positive for them, while Hillary failed to come up with a message that would resonate with at least some potential Trump voters (some were obviously unreachable). Why did she ignore Wisconsin? She just barely won Minnesota, for pete's sake! These errors can't be blamed on Bernie.

The Democratic Party leaders have been living in a bubble. They need to take a very hard, objective look at why they keep losing elections that they should have won in a walk.