There are many important lessons to be gleaned from this year’s primary process, lessons that can have both positive and negative implications across the political spectrum — if, that is, they are taken to heart. They probably won’t be.
But while much of the obsessive, gaffe-hungry media honed in on the circus that is the Republican Party, the Democratic Party will emerge from the convention in July and the general election in November, whatever the results, fractured, ideologically confused, and scorned by those they have disenfranchised, neglected, and failed.
This state of affairs is not, as many have argued, the fault of Bernie Sanders.
Rather, it is the result of a culmination of factors, ranging from Hillary Clinton’s deep flaws and the DNC’s handling of the process to the broad perception that the Democratic Party has lost its way — and, as some would say, its soul.