Bernie out raised Hillary with individual donations? Dems do not have to bow down to billionaires and corporations they just choose to.
Jeffries was 'put there' because he is the successor. Why else would they put him there?
Dems are very adverse to populist ideas. 90% of their own constituency and 60% of independents want universal healthcare and they won't take it up in any full throated manner when it's a slam dunk. They still acting ignorant why the United Healthcare CEO was assassinated. They still aren't picking up the populist clues from the public or rather ignoring them for their donors.
You are right about Hillary and Bernie and in hindsight the party ain’t been right since, but those same people are running the party now that ran it then and they don’t want populist in charge.
I don’t think Jeffries is the successor. They’ll be a bad cycle and he’ll step down or get taken out. He’s only safe in that seat as long as Pelosi is there since she put him there. Pelosi should have been ghosted years ago, but she runs the house delegation of the party. Everybody knows it.
The leadership is against populism but I don’t think the average members are adverse to the ideas. It’s just a hard sell when the long term members can literally point at history and show how the Democrat are made to suffer everytime they tried to implement populist ideals. Between republicans and neoliberal democrats progressives get taken out back and shot everytime they try to make a significant change.
Republicans found a hack in Trump and culture war targets. Trump will lie about anything, they can give their billionaires tax cuts, and then do culture war shyt.
Meanwhile democratic progressives are things like unions that Biden tried to do and we saw how quick they got him out the paint after a bad debate.