Nearly 60 year-old leftist here to say that Matthew's experience with the smug dismissivness of establishment Democrats since 2000 has been the one I've had with them snce 1976.

They treated my generation of the Left with the same patronizing contempt they showed to Matthew's

And in electoral terms, they have next to nothing to show for the way they've treated the people who could have helped them win in my day as well as Matthew's.

Why do they refuse to listen?

Why do they keep the party committed to a relentlessly militaristic foreign policy in an era where U.S. military intervention continually proves useless for making anything better in any country?

Why do they insist on going all out to crush any effort to get the Democratic party to, at the very least, get the party to take the side of ordinary working people against the rich?

Why do they still throw the poor and the young under the bus and focus almost exclusively on seeking the support of wealthy donors and the sort or uptight, miserly, life-hating suburbanites who will never vote for us?

Sticking rigidly with this approachwould make sense if it had produced victory after victory after victory, but what it has actually given us is frequent defeats and a long-term decline at the state and local level.

So, really...what's the point of the "stay the course" thing?