Some good points, thanks for writing them out.

Biden's remark about "ain't black" the other day was somewhat breathtakingly out of place. DOES HE WANT TO WIN OR NOT? If he does not want to win, then why is he running? It reminded me a little of Hillary's deeply damaging remark about "deplorables". The apparent honesty of both remarks was not in itself wrong, but both remarks are wrong, in my view, at least in part because many undecided voters who could go either way actually do earn and deserve (at least, to one degree or another) the respect and best thinking of the candidates, and in those remarks the candidates are showing they do not really have that respect and are not showing a drive to win votes with good respectful effort-filled thinking.

The facile "otherization" (if that is the right term) of anyone who would vote the other way (and we've seen a little of that on display even here in the other responses) for a job candidate has some significant issues with it, and they include these points:

• It fails to honor that many who vote for a third party or for the other party are to a large extent motivated by a desire to go against another candidate and not "for" the candidate for whom they have cast their vote. This is undoubtedly true, to one degree or another, for many (what percentage is hard to say) of the folks who voted for Trump. Some of those are votes that could be won over to the Democratic side in the next election if some work is done to identify issues that the candidate could address better.

This goes both ways. There are undoubtedly people who voted Democrat (myself among them) not primarily because we were inspired by the message of the Democrat but at least in large part because we were so totally against what the Republican had to offer that we thought it necessary to do almost anything (for some of us - up to and including casting a vote for a candidate we very much did not like) to try to prevent the Republican candidate from achieving office. In my own case, I have voted Democrat for President since 2000 (having never before voted for a Democrat for President, going back to '84) in each case because of how concerned I was to counter what I regarded as the awfulness of what the Republican candidate offered. My level of distaste for the Democratic candidate varied here from election to election, but it was always there. For me, a big motivator in each of those five elections was to do everything in my power to help my country avoid a grossly false defender of freedom, property rights, and business.

• There is no such thing as a politician who is wrong in all ways and on all issues. By being so summarily dismissive of folks who would vote for Trump, Democrats miss the opportunity to stake out a much more defensible approach to the race and to discussion in general.

• Personal attacks and bad logic are a problem throughout many discussions. I'm not sure exactly how to classify the flaws in logic that go with arguing that someone belongs to a certain group and so their vote may be dismissed ("deplorables" ) or counted-upon ("ain't black" ), but I think it doesn't help move us toward focusing on issues rather than on personal attacks.

All of these points necessarily include some gross generalizations but I think would be worth some time of Democratic Party strategists to consider them (if they really want to win, which so far as I am concerned, is a very big "if" ).

@kmaz

That is indeed a very big if. I've seen little to suggest that they do desire victory or even that they intend to resist the president. We have had control of one house of Congress for sometime and Pelosi has almost completely greenlit Trump's agenda. She engaged in some political theater in the form of an ill advised impeachment which was doomed to fail but she hasn't actually opposed him on much. There was the shutdown over wall money. Not over whether or not the wall would be funded but over just how many billions Trump would get, and he got what he needed. Otherwise, the House has been very cooperative with Trump.

It seems to me that the democratic establishment is content with Trump in control. They aren't actually all that different from him on policy because the democratic party has moved so far right and with him in power, they are able to maintain their own grip on power by playing off of the hatred people have for Trump. They don't need to work hard to move the country forward, all they have to do is superficial stuff like calling Trump names and the money comes rolling in.

To answer your question of why they are running if they don't want to win, here's my take. The two parties are two sides of the same coin. They are funded by and govern for the same set of elites so they have the same general goals and therefore, it doesn't matter all that much which one of them wins. The republicans are the obvious right wingers who overtly fight for a conservative corporatist agenda. It's a little more complicated for the democrats. On the surface, they are the liberal party but their true function is to capture whatever enthusiasm and political influence is generated by the left and then funnel it into the democratic support behind establishment candidates where it is then purposefully squandered. It's no coincidence that the party was so decisive and capable against the Sanders movement but is then so inept and spinless when negotiating with republicans. They start every negotiation from the center and compromise their way to a right wing outcome. I think this is purposeful because it is what the ruling class wants and they control both parties through their bribes, sorry, I mean campaign contributions.

There is of course some competition and differences in ideology between these two parties but they have much more in common than what separates them and they both view their true political enemies as the outsiders who might actually make some real fundamental changes and rock their gravy boat.

Both four years ago and now it had little to do with trying to win and everything to do with keeping Bernie from power and the White House.

@RoboGraham

What if Hillary had won in 2016? Now that we can see confirmed the extraordinary antipathy that so many have for her (and so very many of them were up-front about this, having stoked that antipathy for 25 years leading up to 2016), and we can see with the similar antipathy for Pelosi that the misogynistic right-wing witch-hunt mentality continues and finds plenty of willing participants (and finds tacit compliance from others on the right who may not share the level of antipathy but who do not challenge it much) .... if Hillary had won, is it possible that the United States might not still exist? Probably it would still exist, but I'm just pointing out, given the striking antipathy toward Hillary Clinton from so many, it seems worth asking how they would have responded to a Hillary Presidency complete with some of the tone-deaf obliviousness that she and many of her supporters were capable of manifesting toward those who tried to make clear how objectionable they thought her Presidency would be to them.

Anyway, I'm familiar with the "Republicans-and-Democrats are two sides to the same coin" discussion and if I were younger I'd be a bit more into it, but it's just not as interesting to me any more. There are differences. One key difference is that the Dems don't pretend to be on the side of capitalism, business, and individual liberties as defined through property rights. The Republicans do pretend this, and often I try to say, or want to say, to some of the Republicans who seem to buy into this pretending: How stupid can you be?

But there is plenty of stupidity to go around and one might as well ask of the Democrats - do you really think that you can win just based on your belief in your own moral righteousness? How far do you think your indignation against Trump is going to get you? When the Constitution is laid waste (even more than it is) after Trump gets elected again (or is declared the winner by the election system, however corrupt), and probably when hundreds of thousands or millions more are dead attributable to his incompetence... when those things happen, what are you going to say?

"Oh, that was just the deplorables voting, there was nothing to do be done about it."

If that is more or less the answer that so many Democrats are planning, then my own personal comment is that yes, we are milling about and having these conversations in the midst of levels of intellectual bankruptcy from so many of our fellow Americans... not only the fools that buy into the more ridiculous aspects and demagoguery and law-breaking that Trump has to offer, but the fools on the left that decline to do any work to listen to their fellow Americans and give more thought to their positions. Notwithstanding the ugliness and chaos of the vast numbers of intellectual bankruptcy cases that are taking place on both sides of the aisle, in the face of trying to address a desperate life and death situation on par with the Great Depression or either of the World Wars, that answer will not be acceptable.

I wish that book were required reading for all citizens, at least all voters.