‘ZACKLY.

I don’t doubt Obama will try, is trying. But I don’t think it will work.

Obama’s magic touch was his cool, smart, black persona. However, he was never a mastermind, as we can see by how just about everything he did blew up or elected more Republicans or sold more guns.

If I may mourn a bit of my past — it took another little piece of my heart to see Bruce Springsteen and his wife on David Geffen’s yacht with Obama and Michelle.

Once upon a time in America it was death to serious political ambitions to be associated with socialism. Thus Democrats considered that charge against Obama in 2008 to be a blood libel.

But like so many stances Democrats trot out to show they are tough on communism or support traditional marriage, it’s all a sham which will be discarded in a hot New York minute if the winds change.

Thanks for the clarification, even as I think I did know where you were coming from. I do know and recognize that he has always been an independent — in his case, *socialist* — except for his brief 2016 foray into the Democrat Party (he always did caucus with them).

I agree that that’s “one of the reasons” [above]. But another reason was the Democrat establishment deck was heavily stacked against him, because “Hillary!”. We don’t know whether he’d actually have captured the nomination facing a level playing field, but I think his chances would have been much, much greater, minus the superdelegates and minus all that establishment hardball thrown at him.

I note that you referred to Hillary as “the more centrist candidate,” and it’s true as far as it goes. Hillary’s statism/socialism was a more corporate statism/socialism, whereas Bernie’s was more populist. Even so, yes, I agree that Hillary was “more centrist” than Bernie, but you and I may disagree over just how much so. Hillary’s instincts as well as world view were definitely statist/socialist (“it takes a village”); I for one am not convinced she evolved politically *that* much from her Wellesley College days.

She was more willing to do what seemed politically doable now, and Bernie was more the radical, gleefully forcing the populace to accept the statism/socialism he would have forcibly rammed down their throats.

I credit your judgment (of course), but it still strikes me that “Bernie is where that large number [who ‘think and believe and feel’ as does Bernie] want to head, and that large number know it – but just can’t say it out loud, because political viability.”

I don’t think you understood what I meant, so I’ll make it more clear.

The quote: “Bernie never was a Democrat.” In other words, Bernie never became a member of the Democratic Party (only briefly, in order to run on the Democratic ticket for president). Basically, his entire political life except for that brief and pragmatic detour into the Democratic Party was outside the Democratic Party. So I meant that literally. When he was a senator, he was an Independent. When he was governor of Vermont, he was an Independent as well. And he’s been very upfront up being a socialist for his whole political life (except for that presidential run, where he de-emphasized it somewhat).

I also wrote: “He’s still a bit too far to the left” for the Democratic Party. It’s true. When he returned to the Senate after his 2016 presidential run, he went back to being an Independent. And one of the reasons he didn’t win the nomination in 2016 was that he lost to the more centrist candidate, Hillary. He was too far to the left of the Democratic Party most of his life to be its leader, and until very recently he still was (I maintain that the events of 2016 indicated that he still is too far to the left).

That doesn’t mean that in recent years there hasn’t been a move of the Democrats towards him. There has. But he’s still not their leader.

M J R: I’d like to argue with you. But I can’t.

It has long been clear Democrats accuse the Republicans of becoming extremists because Democrats don’t notice their own hard shift to the left.

When Obama ran in 2008 it was considered wacko, talk radio propaganda to say Obama was a socialist. After he won Newsweek ran a cover saying, “We’re all socialists now.”

Eight years later a real socialist gave Hillary Clinton a pitched battle, seemingly out of nowhere, which was a major factor in Clinton’s implosion as a candidate such that she managed to lose to Trump.