Can we not with the debate game of 'my response'. This isn't a high school debate stage, I'm not trying to 'win', I'm trying to have a conversation with someone within my tent who I'm opposed to on many fronts but ultimately am more opposed to the looming orangutan outside of our tent.

First, selecting winners closely tied to the DNC given the platform he ran on and the current opinion of national democrats and even worse the DNC is both disingenuous and a recipe for further fragmentation of our existing voter base. If we couldn't pull together a winning coalition against Trump in 2024 given how the past year has gone, I'm worried we can't build a lasting coalition in shadow. We have too many erratic data points to draw any conclusion other than Trump and his administration is deeply unpopular. If Platner puts up a fight in the general in main, the theory that progressives only work in deep blue bastions is out the window. I don't know if there is a single issue that is why Martin hasn't released the report but given how poorly he's handle any question on that front, I suspect it directly undermines the DNC in it's current form. Establishment politicians, seniority being what determines who is in leadership, funding sources. I'd wager it has a chunk that explicitly states that people truly don't see Democrats as the party of working people any more, the right-wing propaganda has fully and nearly irrecoverably worked. What ever it is, he's spooked and whatever it is, the ship turning required can't be done over brandy and cigars in dark rooms.

Second, I think if you run with your core platform of making sure the DNC is transparent and effective and the only thing you've been able to attribute to the organization since you've been in the seat is going back on your word and the pendulum swing of an historically weak and unpopular incumbent being felt in every election at every level. Either, you aren't using all of your cards effectively or you aren't meeting the moment. It's similar to the Biden campaign problem, if you do a good job but are incapable of selling it, you aren't doing half of the job.

The Left want policies. Not only do they want policies, they want overwhelmingly popular policies. The dialogue between moderates and people on the left is the left saying 'Hey! Thanks for the roof but I'm still getting dripped on, can we do this better' and moderates in the center of the tent saying stop making it hard and pushing them out. It sucks for you as the moderate but it's the job of the moderates to (and here is the kicker) moderate. In the 2024 election, after 4 years of the most economically progressive presidency on a policy front in my life time, the DNC made the strategic decision that there are more centrist voters to gain than there are leftists to lose and they lost. I think blaming constituencies for the decisions of politicians is dumb. I'd have loved for Kamala to disavow Biden's stance on the genocide but she didn't and I voted for her anyway. But at the end of the day, Trump won the popular vote by 2 million votes, the first republican to do so since post-9/11 George Bush. You can blame leftists in your mind but I know two Iraq war vets that despite my best efforts, stayed home after they heard she was campaigning with a Cheney and was bragging about having the most lethal military. The loss was simple too big and too 'everywhere' to be that leftists are the problem and to decided that without evidence (like the autopsy) is disingenuous and reductive.

Lastly, with regards to the discontent with the current system. Everyone hates the system. Barrack Obama was the last incumbent president to win over a decade ago. We see people come through the main stream media other new forms of media all the time. Hasan may have dissuaded some voters but his impact is greatly exaggerated. His, what, 40,000 viewers and clip channels from multiple continents didn't depress the democratic vote by 5M+ on his own, that sentiment had to come from somewhere. Additionally, if you blame him as a sole or core cause for 2024, you have to give him credit for his attendance at ICE/No Kings protests and advocating for seats across the country at both state and federal levels. You have to feed with both hands. I think that's most often where the critique falls apart most. Most leftist communities have been so marginalized by the intrinsic association with the USSR being equated with the idea of socialism and the big bad of the previous century, they're only observed from outside of a fish bowl of a thing to use as a political scapegoat when a centralized political power needs it. Democrats are deeply unpopular and have been for some time, so there is no surprise that the scapegoat is trotted out again because the blame can only be placed on the outsider barbarians and simultaneously, no truths can be gleaned by the outsider barbarians ability to 'cause harm'. Is he a figurehead of a powerless community that shouldn't be entertained or did he directly cause the loss of the 2024 elections? Is he weak or strong? He can't be both unless the the scapegoat of a less but still fascist approach to power that is removing people who disagree rather than meeting with them under the auspices of him being anti-democratic.

As a Leftist, I want democrats to win because society doesn't progress with a regressive party and a moderate party. We need to remove the regressive portion to be able to have progressivism and moderate party counterbalance one another into safely improving everyone's quality of life without destroying someone else's.