>>
>>Can't really think of any other major figure who's done much
>>of actual substance for the progressive cause lately. It's a
>>dark time.
>
>Which is precisely why new leadership & succession is
>imperative. And who is drawing up the grassroots energy to
>inspire young people to get involved in the political
>process?

Barack Obama? Not really anybody else. Not Bernie Sanders. He has a lot of followers, certainly enough to breed disunity in the party. But he does not have enough followers to build a winning coalition around, and he never has. No number of birds on podiums will help him when Trump, health-care lobbies, and insurance lobbies start rolling out ads about the cost of Medicare for All.

As for "young people," they've never needed anyone to tell them to care about politics. They either do or they don't. When I first started voting I felt A LOT of grassroots energy for David McReynolds, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, Ralph Nader. That grassroots energy did not help Democrats, Progressives, Socialists, anyone. It was political fool's gold. And it's what Bernie's trying to sell today.

>It ain't Nancy Pelosi.

Naw, she's been too busy getting shit done. Even before she was speaker, she oversaw the entire strategy that stopped George W Bush from privatizing Social Security and Medicare, despite the fact that the GOP held BOTH houses of congress. When she first became speaker, she found the way to pass Obamacare after the GOP thought they'd stopped it by winning a 41st seat in the senate. Most recently, she kept the party in line through the nation's longest government shutdown and didn't fund a dime for Trump's wall. Bernie Sanders was irrelevant to all of these massive legislative victories, and so were his fervent supporters.

>But your blinders have been on full
>display for years - and you can't teach an old donkey new
>tricks.

When the trick is to elect more Republicans, it's not a trick I want to learn. And neither should you.