I appreciate the shoutout, it has been well received so far. I am working tonight on a post about Shelby County, which is about to re-organize from the ashes left by the old party, which Mary thankfully put down last year,

...not excited for a candidacy featuring Karl Dean & his Matlock suits.

Steve, this from a fellow Sanders supporter, I think you know...

Do I think Bernie Sanders would have had a better chance of winning the state in the general? No. He had problems reaching the base in Tennessee, and Clinton's decades-long connections with the state party's movers and shakers gave him no chance.

This doesn't particularly make sense to me. The fact that Party "movers and shakers" gave Sanders no chance in the primary doesn't really seem indicative of how he would have fared in the general. Had he somehow reached the general, these Party "movers and shakers" would have had to vote for somebody, so unless you're suggesting they would have voted third party or for Trump, they would have had to vote for Sanders. (I suspect all you're saying here is that these "movers and shakers" cut him off at the knees in the primary, but you've said it so politely it's resulted in an assertion other than what you meant?!)

Next, neither Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders will ever be elected President of the United States, nor should either of them run again. We need younger candidates (at ALL levels, frankly) to carry their messages.

Agreed that younger candidates are preferable, but I note that the younger candidates endorsed in recent months by Our Revolution are not yet winning in a majority of races. I just went to the organization's "2017 Election Results" page to do a quick tally and determined that just 35% of the candidates they've endorsed won their races. These candidates are largely carrying the same message as Sanders did (Ossoff excepted, grr), but something seems lacking. I suspect it's "likeability" of the sort that catapulted Sanders to that Most Popular Senator in America post. We've yet to identify our immensely "likeable" younger presidential candidate, I'm afraid.

To be blunt, we need a combination of their messages; he is correct on economics and she is correct on social issues, and we cannot win without BOTH.

If you get a minute, could you more fully explain this? What issues are you defining as "social" and why do you think Clinton advances them better?

Yes, I wish Bernie would become a full Democrat, because you cannot reform ANYTHING from the outside, and the DNC, the DCCC and the DSCC desperately need reform.

I'm a bit conflicted on this one, but it seems since the primary that Sanders is committing to the Party in every conceivable way except to change his affiliation on paper, and I too was glad to see it.

I agreed wholeheartedly with every word in your next several paragraphs. I do think, though, that I can answer your (rhetorical) question here:

However, if we can't figure out how and why people voted for Barack Obama twice and then voted for Donald Trump, we are all screwed. Misogyny? Maybe for the people who left during the Reagan years, but the Obama-Trump people? I am not sure about that at all.

I think that, as in 2008 and 2012, voters ultimately supported in 2016 the general election candidate they thought best represented "change" and nothing more. As they find out they didn't get it, they'll really be hungry for some "change" in 2020, huh?!

And yes, yes, yes to all those issues you suggest should frame the presidential election in 2020!

As to the state stuff, Mae Beavers (slapping forehead)! You're sooo right and I didn't even see that.

OMG, somebody light a fire under Fitzhugh.

An afterthought on the importance of having run a "change" candidate in the 2016 presidential race: I've had lots of laborers, likely low wage, working on my house in recent months (selling it) and have had light conversation about the presidential race with maybe 7 or 8 of them.

All but one had voted for Trump and among those every one of them said they could have voted for Sanders, if he'd been on the ticket in the general.

Trump's "draining the swamp" rhetoric had resonated with them, but so had Sanders' railing against the oligarchs and they liked him, too. They expressed concerns about their wages and the existence of Social Security and Medicare when they'd soon need those programs. All appeared to feel that their concerns and interests weren't represented by people now in office.

In short, on the Trump vs. Clinton ballot, they determined that Trump more likely represented "change."

really good response, and I appreciate it,

As for the DNC, Hillary had been involved with them since the 1980s, and it's not surprising that they essentially supported her. Combine that with the fact that so many of the Sanders supporters were new to Presidential politics and it gave them an advantage that Bernie could not overcome.

The fact that the Clinton campaign was caught flat-footed by the Sanders campaign was a sign as to how out of touch they were with the general public, who wanted CHANGE.

I think we, as a party, need to stop looking for saviors and find people who can eloquently espouse values and issues. The Clinton campaign made everything about HER, which backfired on them in the Midwest. It doesn't matter how many votes you get if they are too concentrated, because the Electoral College is not going away.

We can't afford to make these issues all about Bernie, either. He will be 79 in 2020 and we need someone younger.

One last observation about that above link to oral arguments in Wilding, et. al. and I'll move along. The text to that article carries a significant error here:

DNC attorneys assert that the party has every right to favor one candidate or another, despite their party rules that state otherwise because, after all, they are a private corporation and they can change their rules if they want.

But nobody, certainly not I, has maintained that the DNC can't "change their rules." On the contrary, half the party nationally is chapped specifically because they could have changed their rules but chose instead to just violate them.

Presumably there's a rule in there somewhere that allowed Bernie Sanders, a self-professed Democratic Socialist, to run as a Democrat in the Democratic Primary. But if a private organization able to change its own rules finds it has adopted a rule, like this one, that really doesn't work for it, change that rule, don't violate it (which is my polite way of saying STFU telling me "he's not a Democrat" and go take care of your business).

Presumably there's a rule in there somewhere that called for a neutral party primary election, as opposed to a coronation conducted exclusively by party officers at the national level, because we ostensibly saw one. But if a private organization able to change its own rules finds it has adopted a rule, like this one, that really doesn't work for it, change that rule, don't violate it (which is my polite way of saying STFU telling me "it was her turn" and go take care of your business).

This is not complicated and half the Democratic Party is not chapped without reason.