2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: If the Democratic Party continues to go [View all]cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... which was what the link I put there noted when he was noting he wasn't pushing for a 90%+ top marginal tax rate that Eisenhower was comfortable pushing to keep in place in his MORE socialist policies in this area than Bernie's.
Eisenhower called those that didn't like his leaning towards protecting socialist infrastructure like social security *stupid* and he was RIGHT (even if less "right wing" than so many politicians of today in BOTH corporate controlled parties). He warned us AGAINST the dangers of a too powerful MIC even as the general who lead our military in previous wars, when corporate elements of both parties of today seem to just love to make the MIC bigger and more powerful.
People are wanting a candidate that is speaking out for real PROGRESSIVE change! Obama was more nebulous about his stances with his less than definitive "hope and change" campaign that said he would "renegotiate NAFTA" that gave quite a different impression of what he'd do instead in reality later with TPP and other "free trade" policies. But his more nebulous policies were what got the vote over Hillary then who was less nebulous about her more corporate serving policies then, which is why he won. And he was helped by the PTB who probably knew long before Edwards was pushed out of the election right before Super Tuesday that he wasn't going to be in the running at the end, but likely WANTED him to draw away a lot of the progressive votes in to a black hole so that any other real progressive candidate in the field like Kucinich would have much a voice that far in to the primaries, even if people WANTED more progressive policies that Edwards was pushing that got him SECOND place over Hillary in the Iowa caucuses then too.
There were communist party candidates back in FDR's time that arguably pushed he and the democrats more to the left then too to keep them out of the mix as well.