Family fights are the best fights

Although it looks to me like only one side is doing the fighting.

Prominent Democrats are increasingly riled by attacks from Bernie Sanders' supporters, whose demands for ideological purity are hurting the party ahead of the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election, they say.

But it’s not just the outside agitators that Democratic lawmakers, operatives, and activists are annoyed with: They’re tired of what they see as the senator’s hesitance to confront his own backers, either in public or through back channels.

Tensions boiled over recently when a handful of Sanders loyalists bashed freshman Sen. Kamala Harris — a rising star in the party and potential 2020 hopeful — as an establishment tool. Democrats were also rankled that other prominent Sanders allies said support for single-payer health care should be a litmus test for candidates.

In response, Democratic senators and outside groups have begun telling Sanders and friendly intermediaries that if he wants to be a leading figure for Democrats ahead of 2020’s presidential election, he needs to get his supporters in line — or at least publicly disavow their more incendiary statements.

A lot more at the link.  I keep hoping Bernie will decide he'd rather be a leader in some party to the left of the Democrats.  This vitriol follows closely on the heels of Hillary Clinton's latest book, which tears all the scabs off the wounds (which really had not scabbed over all that much).

The late night guys have, as usual, diagnosed the Democrats' problem.

Late-night host Seth Meyers has a message for former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton: Don't blame Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for your loss.

"Hillary Clinton, don't blame Bernie because Donald Trump called you names," Meyers said on Wednesday. "I promise you, he was going to do that anyway."

His comments come after Clinton in her new book blamed Sanders for doing "lasting damage" to her campaign and "paving the way" for President Trump's attacks against her as "Crooked Hillary."

Meyers also questioned why Clinton was "wasting pages" in her book on Sanders. The Vermont senator is "not a fan," he added, before joking Sanders wouldn't pay $17.99 for a book.

"Bernie is not the reason you lost," Meyers continued.

"You know how I know that? You beat Trump by 3 million votes. If you want to blame something ancient, blame the Electoral College."

Meyers also went after Clinton for saying Sanders's ideas were nothing more than pipe dreams.

"I'm not sure if you've been paying attention, but pipe dreams paid off great in 2016," he said.

"Trump won by saying he was going to build a wall. You should have said you were going to build a stairway to heaven or an escalator to Mars that you were going to make the Martians pay for."

There is now an unprecedented opportunity to pull together Democrats and liberals, Meyers said.

"The best way to do this is to get the people who voted for you and the people who voted for Bernie on the same page," Meyers said, adding that Sanders helped make Clinton a better candidate.

"You know, the candidate who beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes," he added.

This was the night after Jimmy Kimmel was a bit less direct and little more wry.

“I was just thinking to myself this morning, ‘I would love to relive that magical election of 2016,'” he began. “It’s like reading a book about why the Titanic sank while you’re sitting at the bottom of the ocean.”

Kimmel pointed to an excerpt of the book where Clinton referred to James Comey as a “rash FBI Director.”

“Although in fairness to Comey, he only got that rash after being forced to shake hands with her husband,” he quipped.

He then brought up Clinton’s attacks on her primary rival Bernie Sanders and wondered why a non-Democrat like him would run for the Democratic nomination.

“It’s a very good question… that should have been asked two years ago,” Kimmel said. “I guess it didn’t come up til now.”

Kimmel then showed a ‘trailer’ for her book “It’s That F**ker Bernie’s Fault,” which promotes the retelling of her “astonishing defeat” and why “despite overwhelming odds, everything collapsed.”

“At least she’s taking responsibility,” Kimmel added.

Folks, you know I gave up on this Democratic Party a long time ago.  It seems obvious to me that they won't be winning anything in a midterm election cycle, which would probably be the case even without the joy of all this division (certainly in Texas).  I'll just ask what few friends I still have that voted for Hillary, think the Russians stole the election, believe Bernie is the reason for all this infighting, etc. a couple of questions.

What do you think a US Senate with a filibuster-proof majority in 2018 is going to do with Trump's agenda?  What do you believe a Texas Legislature is capable of if Joe Straus is not Speaker of the Texas House?

The answer in both cases is: worse than you can ever imagine.

I am of the opinion that 2018 is already lost.  And 2020 is very probably the last chance Democrats will have to get their shit together.  Somebody is going to have to swallow their pride and stand down, though, and I don't expect it to be the Sandernistas.  Good luck and all that to everybody involved.  I'll be surprised if we don't see the blame game played out for several more years.