conscious help Trump win?

How is voting our conscience ever throwing our vote away? Voting for a candidate who we don't trust and who disparages our values is more of a throw-away vote in a non-battleground state.

If you believe otherwise, feel free to persuade me. I'm not unpersuadeable.

The Democratic Party is fractured differently this cycle.

In 2008, the split between Hillary and Obama was a bit more personal (meaner) but less ideological (Obama held few political views that seemed anathema to Hillary supporters).

Likewise, in 2004, there were some ideological divisions early in the campaign (thanks to Dennis Kucinich and, on a few issues, Howard Dean), but by March there were no raging policy divisions separating the main contenders.

Neither Kerry nor Obama faced an ideological schism.

This time, there is an ideological split. This split is as wide as the Gore-Nader division, but Sanders isn't going to mount a third-party challenge and, while I anticipate Jill Stein will surprise with a perfomance that will shock many, she won't approach Naders' level of success.

So we have a fracture, but it is not beyond fixing.

Hillary needs to show leadership if she is going to fix this fracture, and Trump will beat a fractured Democratic Party if she fails.

Hillary should embrace populist rules and DNC leadership reform and a decidedly progressive platform at the convention rather than resisting them, she should pick a liberal running mate and actively solicit Sanders' input on the decision, and she should offer whatever compromises at the convention she must to get the Sanders-led movement behind the campaign to take the Senate back and reinvested in the Democratic Party which so many feel has left them.

It is not too late to fix this, but it will not be easy, and it will take leadership unlike any we have seen so far.

right before the first woman president (Warren 2020!).

scoundrel DWS change the rules to allow the superdelegates to vote before the convention?

I keep seeing Hillarycrats saying the primary is over. Seems to me that we had more voters who did not want to be disenfranchised, but maybe that's how the Hillarycrats prefer it.

No wonder she divides the party and can't even beat Trump.

Johnson has picked a strong running mate and the Libertarian vote will be a much bigger factor than usual this election in light of the historic unfavorable numbers for both major party front-runners.

It would be wise to (a) subtly define Johnson-Weld as the alternative conservative who shares much more than Trump in common with traditional Republicans and (b) implicitly promote Johnson's and Weld's profiles.

If we don't define Johnson-Weld as the conservative alternative to Trump, the Republicans will define the ticket as a middle-ground choice (to take evenly from both parties instead of taking predominantly from the Republicans).

IMPORTANTLY, this should be a primary issue. Our primary is ongoing and theirs is effectively over. If we wait until after the convention to start defining Johnson-Weld, we will have failed to capitalize on the primacy opportunity we have to introduce currently unknown Johnson-Weld with our picture of what his role in the Fall will be about.

politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.

"In the United States, "Third Way" adherents embrace fiscal conservatism to a greater extent than traditional social liberals, and advocate some replacement of welfare with workfare, and sometimes have a stronger preference for market solutions to traditional problems (as in pollution markets), while rejecting pure laissez-faire economics and other libertarian positions. The Third Way style of governing was firmly adopted and partly redefined during the administration of President Bill Clinton…  Clinton, Blair, Prodi, Gerhard Schröder and other leading Third Way adherents organized conferences to promote the Third Way philosophy in 1997 at Chequers in England.  The Third Way think tank and the Democratic Leadership Council are adherents of Third Way politics."

"Neoliberal" - favoring international trade agreements to benefit the corporate sector globally, deregulation of the banking and financial sectors, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy (as with the movement toward private prisons).

"The Clinton Administration embraced neoliberalism by pursuing international trade agreements that would benefit the corporate sector globally (normalization of trade with China for example). Domestically, Clinton fostered such neoliberal reforms as the corporate takeover of health care in the form of the HMO, the reduction of welfare subsidies, and the implementation of 'Workfare'."

"The high rate (compared to Europe) of incarceration in the U.S. – specifically 1 in 37 American adults is in the prison system – heavily promoted by the Clinton administration, is the neoliberal U.S. policy tool for keeping unemployment statistics low, while stimulating economic growth through the maintenance of a contemporary slave population and the promotion of prison construction and 'militarized policing.'"

Why do you pretend that Democrats in red states like Texas or blue states like California will affect SCOTUS nominations, LGBTQ equality, immigration reform, and other progressive causes by voting for or against a neoliberal-neocon third-way candidate at the top of the ticket?

We both know this argument is total bullshit in the 45 + states (over 90% of contests) that will not be battleground states in November.

The path to unity is not via threats or hollow fear mongering arguments, but in fixing the broken party rules and ineffective leadership, adopting a progressive platform, including a progressive on the ticket, and finding a central role for the Sanders-Warren wing of the party at the convention and beyond.

A true leader could accomplish this easily - this simple task will require 1/10th the compromise and good will that governing with a Republican House will require. A leader who cannot cooperate with allies will probably fail in November before we get a chance to see how poorly she fares working with a hostile House of Representatives.

Makes you wonder how she's going to bring Paul Ryan and a nation that's chock-full of Republucans "to heel" (as she likes to say) much less how she'd find common ground with antagonistic leaders in Russia and China.

Yeah, we got a foolproof plan working here.

Assume Hillary is the nominee. If there is meaningful party rules reform, a progressive platform, a ticket with a progressive VP nominee, and a useful roll for the FDR-Sanders-Warren wing of the party at the convention and beyond, there will be a greater degree of unity.

If DWS and lobbyists continue to have dominance at the DNC, if the platform is all double-talk and centrist pablum, if the VP nominee is a neocon or a neoliberal, and if the HRC-DWS wing of FDR's party freezes out the FDR-Sanders-Warren wing of the party at the convention and beyond, there will still be some unity but not as much.

Regardless of whether Hillary is nominated, the movement led by Sanders will go forward; the question is whether it goes on within the Democratic Party or parallel to the Democratic Party.