We saw a post on the rec’d list tonight which essentially proposes that the reason why Dems lose elections is because sometimes one faction within the Dem Party starts to use extreme language to criticize the other faction.  

Although, after reading the posting, it appears that the author’s only intent was to accuse and condemn, he did suggest in his title that the greater significance of extreme intra-party characterizations is that they create divisions within the Dem Party that can be difficult or impossible to heal after the party’s nominee has been determined.

I would suggest that if he had addressed this larger question from a truly objective POV, he would have arrived at a very different understanding of what causes Dems to lose.

Yes, Dems lose when their precious unity is dissolved, but may I suggest that this dissolution of unity is especially unforgivable when one of its factions decides that the only way it can ensure that its candidate will win the nomination is by creating a negative image [in the eyes of a majority of Democrats] of the other’s side’s candidate, by relying primarily on innuendo and misrepresentations of the truth that are emphasized with expressions of negative emotion.

That is what we are seeing now, but that is not how it all started out.

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Early on in the campaign season, last summer, the two candidates were in the habit of politely refer to the fact that they had differences of opinion with each other’s ideas/proposals/voting record.

The Clinton campaign in particular was content to keep the competition at this level of respect for several months, as they were quite aware of their strengths within the party’s network of personal connections and they enjoyed impressive leads in the polls.

But that stance changed in January, when internal polling started to show that they were losing a lot of support to Sanders the last couple of weeks before the Iowa caucus.  The key ‘adjustment’ they made was for Hillary to start ‘going negative’ on Bernie Sanders.

What did that mean?  

It meant, above all else, that she would begin to express negative emotions whenever she started to mischaracterize various aspects of the Senator’s proposals, in order to give uninformed Democrats the impression that Bernie's proposals were threatening to them.

The most important ingredient of a negative campaign is not so much the specific claims you make or the words you choose, it is the emotion you express when you refer to your opponent’s ideas/values/record/supporters.

This did indeed open the door to all the divisiveness that followed.  Sanders’ supporters were outraged when they heard themselves described a racists and misogynists, as idiots and fools; more and more of them started to respond equally unfavorable depictions of Clinton and The Establishment.

The unanswered question of this now divisive contest between the Clinton and Sanders camps is why did Hillary decide that she needed to go there?  She had her advantages: name recognition and widespread support within the institutional Democratic Party.

I really think her best course of action would have been for her to continue on with the ‘Queen Mother’ bit where she’d simply acknowledge with appreciation all of her supporters and simply put all her ‘unemotional marbles.’

With a ‘wise smile’ she could continually refer to herself as the ‘moderate’ option withing the Democratic Party, happily occupying the party’s center.  If all of her teams guesses and calculations were accurate, then she’d have nothing to worry about.

Sanders starts to gain strength?  Well, continue to try to sell your moderate pitch, and if it turns out that most of the Democrats are more interested in the kind of change that Bernie Sanders was talking about, well then, you win some and you lose some.  

If she had ended up losing with this approach, at least she would have been able to maintain her dignity as a Democrat who would never use ‘underhanded’ methods in order to defeat an opponent whose support you would truly like to have if you win as you expect.

But instead, she decided to follow the recommendations she was getting that she should take the risk of completely alienating up to half of the Dem Party by subjecting Bernie to Republican-style attacks, the kind that seek to create a negative fictional image of her opponent in the eyes of those who are about to vote.

If the Dem Party loses in November because it has lost its unity and cohesion, the blame will rest solely on Hillary Clinton and her team of closest advisors.  It is a  win-at-all-costs approach that is fully responsible for enmity we now see in both camps.