Don't eat each other up over this folks. It's not Hillary's fault. It's not Bernie's fault.

[Tobin S.]

They campaigned their hearts out for us. And it's not OUR fault. None of you here is to blame. I bet every single one of you contributed to Hillary's campaign in some way. A vote counts as a contribution, perhaps the most vital one.

I'm going to break it down for you all like this, and it's all really very simple. I think many of you are making this way too complicated.

I have several family members who voted for Trump. I come from a long line of rednecks. These family members are unsophisticated and have no understanding of nuance. They don't even know what sophistication and nuance mean, and they aren't about to pick up a dictionary to find out. They are ignorant and arrogant. They think white people are better than everyone else. They are uncomfortable or downright fearful of people who are different than them, including yours truly. If they can't comfortably relate to one of their own white, male family members who happens to have a liberal outlook, just imagine how they feel around African-Americans and Muslims and Latinos. If Trump understood anything about politics he understood that there was a large portion of the population that felt disenfranchised just by the mere presence of a black man in the White House, and he played right into that.

I saw a statistic about the election the other day on the news. Something like 46% of people who were eligible to vote stayed home this election. Only 25% of eligible voters voted for Trump, and the majority of them are just like my redneck relatives. I drive a truck for a living, a profession dominated by working class and middle class white men, and I listened to the CB radio a lot before the election. It was about 99% pro-Trump. I only heard one man trying to preach some sense into those assholes and he was a black driver. It was a hopeless exercise.

Lay the blame squarely where it belongs. We know middle class and working class white people should be on our side, but we can't stop them from voting against their own interests. We can't make them stop hating people who are different from them. All the ass kissing in the world isn't going to make them come around. They'll just have to feel the consequences of their actions. Too bad it has to involve everyone else.

Be kind to each other here. Everyone here is hurting over this.

[lovemydog]

1. Thank you.

The so-called Sanders wing and the so-called Clinton wing must find ways to get along. We're already outnumbered and have been getting trounced in state, local & congressional elections. We need all the newer people we can get, and should especially be finding ways to get people who don't vote or are too hesitant to vote involved in the process. Especially at local levels. That's the only way we're going to reinvigorate our party. At the grass roots level. I'll also add that posting all sorts of insults toward fellow liberals just makes us become a circular firing squad. We can tighten up our game. Why would anyone who is considering voting want to vote for people who just attack one another and anything and everything else, with overblown rhetoric.

[Demsrule86]

4. Who gave a speech on this issue reigniting controversy?

[lovemydog]

6. Who reignited the controversy,

the person who gave the speech or those who overreacted to it?

[ehrnst]

14. Overreacting? Are "those" people overreacting to Trump's actions, "causing" that controversy? (nt)

[ehrnst]

12. An opportunist. (nt)

[rawhideal]

8. Idiots

That's exactly the way they are here.

[apcalc]

2. I agree with everything you wrote-

Please don't forget to include the part about insecure men who couldn't vote for a woman to lead them, white (mostly) males who felt threatened by change.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. I'll get yelled at for this, but the "common man" is no shining example of goodness and light...

Too often he's just an uneducated asshole. Say that, though, and you're an elitist snob.

Hamilton did not trust democracy to the "common man" (Women were not considered useful for much of anything by anyone back then, Abigail Adams notwithstanding...) and so we had the Electoral College and Senators elected by state legislators to have a little distance between the rabble and national government.

No, we should not make it harder for anyone to vote, not the least because education and wealth do not guarantee rationality, but we should do whatever we can to raise the discussion.

[BainsBane]

5. Then tell Bernie to stop blaming us

and using all his time to attack the Democratic Party and its voters. He insisted on making the post election about his ego, and he made women and people of color the target of his wrath.

After the election, I initially cautioned people about not blaming Bernie. i noted that although the primary was ugly, he did campaign for Clinton and that division would not be helpful. But then he started up attacking first Hillary and now women and people of color through his tirade about identity politics. That was in response to a question from a Latina supporter of his who talked about serving in the state legislature in MA. He yelled at her by saying she couldn't just run on identity politics (she had committed the crime of saying she was Latina, and that set him off) and that she had to run against Wall Street. She's in fucking MA , talking about the state legislature. Wall Street isn't in MA, and she simply mentioned that she was Latina.

It's truly unfortunate he holds such anger toward women like that voter. He needs to get over it and stop blaming the most marginalized populations for the fact he is only a multi-millionaire and not president, as he apparently believes is his birthright. I don't give a shit about his bruised ego. I care about my country and my party.

He decided to make people like me his enemy. He succeeded. I will not stay silent because he is so anxious to suck up to the racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic voters he thinks so much more valuable than Democrats.

[Me.]

7. Well Said

[justhanginon]

10. I agree wholeheartedly with you.

[ehrnst]

15. Thank you.

[lunamagica]

16. a million

[Little Star]

21. Ditto

[lostnfound]

22. Be kind to EACH OTHER. Road rage is rude to passengers

If you want to yell at Bernie, write to him.
Coming here to a place that should feel like home is like getting in a car as a passsenger, looking forward to a pleasant conversation, and instead the angry man in the seat next to you starts getting angry and swearing at other drivers on the road.

I'm always saying,THEY can't hear you, but *I* can.

[BainsBane]

23. I forgot

That DU is supposed to be for attacking Democrats. I guess we should all be calling the president a Posucs in the few weeks he has left.

Maybe we can figure out who the next Dem nominee is so we can trash them to ensure they can't win the election?

God forbid anyone think Democratic voters actually matter when there are racist Trump voters who need to be coddled.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

27. You just made the OP's point.

[BainsBane]

29. Yes, I know

My role as a lowly citizen is to serve as fodder for a political elite's anger over his own inability to win the primary. I have no right to criticize him, whereas he should attack my rights and my political concerns in order to curry favor with the more important Trump voter.

I am sick to death of being told I am being divisive because I object to Sanders trashing the Democratic Party and more importantly its voters. This reminds me of the primary on which we were told that we had no right to criticize or even inquire about Sanders positions because we owed him fealty.

No one pays attention to what I say but millions listen to Sanders, and he is using that bully pulpit to sow division by attacking the party. Criticizing me in order to excuse him makes perfectly clear that the goal is not to promote unity; It is instead to protect his continual divisiveness.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

30. If you say so. But I'm not interested in re-litigating the primaries.

[Tobin S.]

32. Okay. BERNIE! STOP BLAMING DEMOCRATS! Hopefully he reads DU.

Bernie is human and he's fallible, just like the rest of us. The thing is he is on our side. Do you think he went into the voting booth and punched the card for Trump? That is, in effect, what you seem to be saying.

But he can blame you and you can blame him, and on and on it will go. Or you can stop and take a look at the people who actually put Trump in the White House. That wasn't Bernie and Bernie didn't help Trump.

[uponit7771]

9. True, FBI... Russians .... and voter suppression are the EMPIRICAL things we know about now

... all rest is guessing

[treestar]

11. thank you

That was very thoughtful.

Yes, it is the fault of the white uneducated people in the swing states. And the Electoral College. We should take some comfort in the popular vote win in that it shows the majority in the country overall do not buy into the Orange Beast's shit.

[NCTraveler]

13. You are wonderful. Thanks. Nt

[safeinOhio]

17. Bill Murray said

"It's hard to win an argument with a smart person, but it's damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person"

[Pacifist Patriot]

24. Very wise words.

[kairos12]

18. Great post. Thank you. Keep us from shooting ourselves in the foot.

[blueseas]

19. Be kind to each other

We need to be kind to each other - look at what we are facing.

[PatSeg]

20. Also

I am getting a little tired of Democrat bashing by many in the media, including Bill Maher. What did the Democrats and Hillary do wrong? Obviously any campaign could be better, but everything the Democrats did was light years better than Trump - amazing convention, outstanding TV ads, articulate and informative speeches, better message, and almost perfect debate performances.

Trump was a terrible candidate who ran an awful campaign, but got a lot of free promotion from the media who spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about emails, instead of Trump's corruption and racist rhetoric.

I think the question shouldn't be why did Hillary lose (which she didn't), but why on earth did Trump win?

[Pacifist Patriot]

25. I agree.

[Pacifist Patriot]

26. Thank you

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

28. Well said. I'm already tired of the finger-pointing and blaming

and Monday-morning quarterbacking. We have to figure out how to deal with the current situation and not keep re-litigating the campaign or, FFS, the primaries.

It is, of course, the duty of the DNC and the other Democratic PTB to examine every aspect of the campaign from the beginning to try to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent a disaster like this from ever happening again. They have to look at everything objectively, regardless of who might take offense, because that's their job. And those of us who want to get involved to rebuild the party should do so. I agree with the OP, though, that there is no benefit to going on DU and whining that it was Hillary's fault and she was a terrible candidate; or it was Bernie's fault and isn't he a terrible person, because (a) both statements are bullshit, and (b) we'll just revert back to all that ridiculous infighting during the primaries. Let's not do that.

[KT2000]

31. thank you for this

I am so tired of people blaming Hillary when she did campaign her heart out. This election was more about the American population than anything. This was the mirror for our country.
No Democrat is going to go to the level that trump did - America is soul sick.