Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

In other words, Democrats are now competitive among the top 20 percent. This has changed the economic make-up of the Democratic Party and is certain to intensify tensions between the traditional downscale wing and the emergent upscale wing.

The Republican Party in 2016 is an example of what can happen when the dominant wing fails to address the concerns of the majority. The rebellion against the Republican establishment is on the verge of producing the nomination of a man who is anathema to the majority of elected officials and party activists, a candidate with the potential to drag the party into minority status for years to come.

The “truly advantaged” wing of the Democratic Party – a phrase coined in this newspaper by Robert Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard – has provided the Democratic Party with crucial margins of victory where its candidates have prevailed. These upscale Democrats have helped fill the gap left by the departure of white working class voters to the Republican Party.

At the same time, the priorities of the truly advantaged wing — voters with annual incomes in the top quintile, who now make up an estimated 26 percent of the Democratic general election vote — are focused on social and environmental issues: the protection and advancement of women’s rights, reproductive rights, gay and transgender rights and climate change, and less on redistributive economic issues. [...]

“Morally, I am a Democrat,” one of the participants commented, “but my wallet says I am a Republican.”

A Democrat whose wallet tells him he is a Republican is unlikely be an strong ally of less well-off Democrats in pressing for tax hikes on the rich, increased spending on the safety net or a much higher minimum wage.

Bernie Sanders has tried to capitalize on this built-in tension within the Democratic primary electorate, but Hillary Clinton has so far been able to skate over intraparty conflicts. In the New York primary, for example, she did better among voters making $100,000 or more than among the less affluent, while simultaneously carrying African Americans and moderate Democrats of all races by decisive margins.

For years, Grover Norquist, a leader of the anti-tax movement, boasted that the right has built a rock-solid “leave us alone coalition,” only to see Trump crack it wide open this year.

Bernie Sanders is unlikely to do the same to the center-left coalition. His support is heavily concentrated among young, well-educated, white, very liberal, independent voters and it is not broad enough to defeat Clinton, as Tuesday’s primary results continued to demonstrate.

Anticipating this development, Tad Devine, a top adviser to Sanders, said on Saturday, “If we think we have to, you know, take a different way or re-evaluate, you know, we’ll do it then.”

Sanders’s extraordinary performance to date, however, points to the vulnerability of a liberal alliance in which the economic interests of those on the top — often empowered to make policy — diverge ever more sharply from those in the middle and on the bottom.

It is no credit to the millions of decent and intelligent Americans that the race is between two clowns - Trump and Clinton. She wil win and the country will have a historical liar, cheat and arrogant female who is as much prt of thje corporate corner as the Republican jokes.

Now that picture general is an outstanding one and a man of good mind, leadership and respect. Yee-haw.

Former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives […]

As Speaker, he was still the leader of the House Republicans. However, by tradition, he normally did not take part in debate, although he had the right to do so, and almost never voted from the floor. He was not a member of any House committees during his Speakership.

There is a very outstanding matter reflecting on this election. Sanders has the lowest income depending on ordinary people sending in donations. Trump being a billionaire can use hos own money but Clinton is up to her ears in corporate dosh. An interesting matter neatly ignored. Everyone will already know my attitude to the system over there but there is yet another rather bad thing in the shadows. It is the matter of people NOT having the vote and this is not a tiny thing as in New York over 120,000 no longer have a vote  the vote and this is happening all over the place. Sometimes it is incompetence by the authorities but there is also some more concerning as this is a terrible thing all over the country. Not a very good advert for democracy is it? Clinton will be in the White House thanks to all that massive corporate money and have her strings pulled.Kind of funny that she is well, guilty!

Our last government was a coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

A system with a far wider representation from the mess yours is in is somehow less democratic?

In my country the top 1" cover nearly a quarter iof government tax income and the top 10% cover almost half! As the topic is US there is a deep fault and more and more are getting frustrated at the hard truth on money barons running things and the ordinary people frustrated.  So the system is creaking and the corruption over lost voting rights across the nation are frightening.

[…] of cours[e] ignore the hundreds of thousands who are not getting a damn vote […]

the top 1"

Before ya know it you're bollocks deep.