I feel like a big problem that drives the dirtbag left (which to be clear, Gwen is not) wild with rage is the ultimate knowledge of their own impotence. Electoral politics requires supplication; they want to coerce. https://twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL/status/1249712403404783618

When you're trying to get elected - especially from a starting unpopular position like American leftism is - you need to cajole, plead, make alliances and beg.

You know, the sorts of things bitter privileged leftists aren't used to doing and indeed view as morally stained.

The sorts of things seen not only as treacherous and cowardly (by fools), but also as a continuation of society's abuse. Begging doesn't feel good. Supplication can feel humiliating. And as we all know Good Politics can only be defined by how they make you feel!

More charitably, though, this can be demoralizing to those who aren't used to Doing the Work. The fever dream of Sanders' candidacy for those it consumed was always that unshakable populist sense of Rightness, of triumphant power backed by the grand upwelling of the People.

Having to beg doesn't fit into that fantasy, it doesn't feel strong, and you could tangibly tell how the die hard Sandersists, for whom he had become something like a religious savior, RESENTED doing it.

Sanders supporters are of course far from the only candidate supporters who did this, but I'm just saying that for whatever reason (mostly his ultimately weak electoral position) it was most devastating to him.

When you're "establishment," you can get away with being imperious.

But when you're an underdog, the cause is not a place to indulge in your fantasies of authority. You're backing a weak candidate and you need to get those votes no matter how much it humiliates or debases you.

There's a degree of this with Warren's supporters too, although less overtly hostile - the whole idea that She Has A Plan For That, and the resentment that she didn't get "her due."

Does that plan help get her votes? *Should* it? Sure! But *does* it?

Ultimately, electoral politics are only *rarely* going to feel good - in the triumph, maybe! NOT, most likely, in the buildup and the effort.

If electoral politics felt good, lefties and revolutionaries wouldn't have to spin so hard to make them sound Heroic (tm).

And when society has been brutal to people for a long time, a demagogic appeal of inevitable triumph through giving free reign to your rage is awfully seductive!

But it doesn't necessarily make you *more likely to win* just because it's what you, the aggrieved partisan, wanted.

By contrast, Joe Biden didn't need to beg, or plead, or appeal, because he's a privileged establishment candidate who can simply point to the "work" he's done for his base among Black voters and then tell everyone else "bend the knee."

Accept it or defy it, you cannot deny it.