My sense of the Democratic bubble is that the emphasis is the other way: it’s a left+integrity insurgency. A lot of young people want cradle-to-grave government but weakly. But libertarian ideas of clean government, which should be the opposite of that, can play ok in social media discussions. It’s the open corruption, it’s that ABSCAM would now all be done simply in the light, with politicians ok putting their names on what they’re doing, that has people really furious.

I think the movement would make compromises, if they were offered in the right way. Obama compromising with the insurance industry and never asking for Single Payer has people furious; I’m not sure that Obama asking for Single Payer and then negotiating with Republicans and coming up with the best compromise he could would be the same thing.

I also don’t think the Democratic bubble is really in that much more trouble than usual: I’m in the insurgent left+integrity camp, and Sanders among my favorite leaders more or less ever, both Clintons are among my least favorite top-level Democrats. That is a momentary stretch of the bubble, not a long-term pattern. It would not be hard to have a candidate that brought things right back to normal —imagine something like Biden vs Dean, for example, and the Democratic Party would look equally functional and dysfunctional as always. You can’t say that about the Republicans, you can’t find a way to put Kasich, Cruz and Trump supporters in the same bubble. The Democrats are losing another generation of youth voters and could take over the electoral system if they didn’t do that, but that was the plan in the 90’s an 00’s too.

The younger generation is really pissed at their elders right now, whether they are for Sanders or a slice that screams for Trump.