As many at Daily Kos realize and argue, the NeoLiberal Clintonistas and other corporatists have been a disaster for the party and turned it, and so the country, over to corporate wealth. That they are more humane than the sociopaths in the Republican Party does not matter when the Republicans make government by Democrats unworkable. I voted a straight Democratic ticket, but almost never for a Democrat, only against a Republican.
It is hard to get a lot of people out to vote against someone, especially when barriers are erected against non-Republican constituencies.
If Progressives and Liberal leaders have any strategic sense, which I have seen precious little evidence for so far, they will push for majority vote elections that would thereby empower third parties, through those parties get our issues into the discussion, give us people to vote for without automatically helping the Republicans, and put pressure on the NeoLiberals like Hillary to modify their efforts to serve corporations.
By far the most important progressive Democratic senator, Elizabeth Warren, could never have arrived by rising through the party's ranks. The Democratic establishment selects against progressives. Shumer is more their style. Think about it.
Intelligent progressive leaders should now support state initiatives to establish majority vote elections. Had they been strategic minded enough to do that in Maine after LePage was elected the first time, he would not be governor today. So far in Maine and elsewhere like California, such leaders have apparently fantasized themselves as the future of the Democratic Party, rising to power as if by magick, and so paying no attention to political realities or questioning the two party monopoly that is destroying this country.
This is naïve. The only powerful force pulling at the Democrats comes from the corporate world. If there were a third party with genuine liberal and progressive chops, given that many Americans support progressive issues The farther the Democrats move in a corporatist direction the more people will vote for a liberal third party. From even a liberal Democratic perspective, a viable liberal third party would be a God-send, and the only way to that is via state initiatives.
Robert Reich recently said we need third parties. State initiatives are how you will get them. Maine should start and there should be many who follow.