The pattern for the last 24 years:

[DanTex]

The Dems win. Stuff gets better. Then the alt-left decides to revolt because we don't all live in collective farms.

Then the GOP wins. Everyone sees how not the same the two parties are.

The Dems get back in. Stuff gets better. Then the alt-left decides to revolt because we don't all live in collective farms.

Rinse and repeat.

Do we have to go through this every time? We need to find a way to explain to alt-lefties that the parties really are different without having to have an actual display of that difference. Because those displays are very costly.

[HassleCat]

1. Who are these alt lefties?

And how is it they live in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania?

[yallerdawg]

2. It's those freakin' colleges...

with their left-wing professors!

No wonder Bernie was pushing for free tuition!

It takes up to a lifetime to get beaten down into submission, but we do finally shake our idealism - and get pragmatic.

[Lint Head]

3. We need to stop using the term alt right. They are Nazis

They are racist. They are bigots. They are people who support grabbing women by their genitals.

[Fast Walker 52]

4. EXACTLY-- I posted something similar to this on Facebook, a few times actually.

This:
What's very depressing is we went through this exact shit 16 years ago, narrowly "electing" GW Bush and seeing his dimwitted extremist right-wing agenda push things backwards and result in multiple disasters (9/11, Iraq war, Katrina-FEMA mishandling, financial crash). He left office finally, thankfully gracefully, just 8 years ago, with a terrible approval rating, and new hope with Obama elected. And another 8 years and things are not great, the GOP did NOTHING to help at all, but still things are looking up in many ways. So WHY do people want to re-live the Bush years and go through painful years of disaster and moving backwards, when it is so predictable??? It's so freaking tedious and frustrating to have people forget this history that isn't even that old. I really don't know how the GOP always manages to wipe their voter's memories clean every cycle... unless maybe they had no memory in the first place. And Trump will surely be the GWB administration on steroids and maybe even LSD, and if things don't go completely to hell in the next 4-8 years, we get to start the cycle all over. Yay!

[BobbyDrake]

5. Yeah, I'm sick of the shitturds on the Left being our biggest Achilles' Heel.

Real progress is hard, it takes time, and doesn't always work perfectly the first time.

What's most disturbing is that the people who fail to recognize that continue to think that they're the most educated and knowledgeable on every subject, despite massive and repeated examples proving otherwise.

[killbotfactory]

6. Keep fighting for those moderate republican votes.

I'm sure they exist somewhere.

[DanTex]

7. And then the alt-left gets smug when the GOP wins.

[killbotfactory]

9. In all the time I've been on DU, over several major elections...

This is the first time I've ever been motivated to ignore other posters AFTER an election.

Amazing.

Good luck with the left-bashing.

[DanTex]

10. It's the alt-left that I'm bashing. The left doesn't help Republicans win elections.

[R B Garr]

8. Yup, it is the exact pattern, and it is now being exploited by outsiders

to the max. It is the ultimate political suicide.

The GOP seems to understand this intrinsically. They would vote for Jack the Ripper if it meant keeping the White House. Their candidates are monumentally horrible, but in the end they know they will be propped up by others and they can hide behind their own stupidity while the Democrats have to explain that getting elected is really, really, really important. Oy....

What a SHAME that Al Gore was ripped apart the way he was. Instead of Al Gore's environmental policies, we got George Bush's war.