Not in our lifetimes
Two campaigns messaged for "single payer".
Together they obtained less than 5% of the preference. Had there not been a historic "first woman" (not actually correct, the truer meme is "first dynastic spouse", recognizing the Adams, Roosevelt and Bush sets of administrations), or a historic "first non-white candidate" (not actually correct either, the truer meme is "first non-white senator-candidate", recognizing Rep. Chisholm's and Rev. Jackson's campaigns), it is unlikely the outcome would have been any different.
Organized labor, the reason for Nevada's selection as an early-contest by the DNC, chose some other outcome than an affirmation of single-payer as a plank of the 2008 Democratic Platform.
Neither of the two candidates for whom organized labor did align offered any particular policy favorable to organized labor, only the political end of alignment with the winner, or in this particular contest, the winning duo.
The lesson learned is that there is no coupling, tight or loose, between progressive policy and national labor organizations during party primaries. Only the political outcome matters -- organizational elites and their alignment with the winner.
Two campaigns messaged for "out now". The same campaigns and the same result.
The lesson learned is that there is no coupling between a retreat from the intentional errors of two wars that in fact have had significant bipartisan support since the fraud was first uttered, and still enjoy significant bipartisan acceptance, and party primaries. Only the political outcome matters, so whichever party prevails in the general election, the war will continue in its present form.
Two campaigns which could have messaged meaningfully, from the well of the Senate, for "no retroactive immunity for illegal intercept" (wiretap, the FISA mess) didn't. Those campaigns were the beneficiaries of their respective issue-indifferent party activists, and together obtained 95% of the preference.
The lesson learned is that there is no coupling between the erosion of the Constitution and the institutions of law enforcement and the preservation of political liberties, from Ashcroft to Gonzales, from astonishingly massive, and pre-9/11, intercept of voice and data communication, from torture as a routine administrative practice of patently obvious inconsequential utility, from the loss of Habeas Corpus for citizens in our own custody, and party primaries.
We're not going to see "single payer" in our lifetimes, there are simply too few of us who are uninsured and know it, and too many of them, the Republicans, the Reagan Dems, who've got good enough jobs, jobs with some semblance of health insurance, who know they don't need "single payer".
The war will continue, from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to ... there simply aren't enough killed to make a peace movement.
There won't be any grand clean up of the Ashcroft-to-the-present, in fact, the transactional nature of the relationship between the electoral winners and the organizational elites and their alignment with the winner won't change. The "ethics" message that failed in the campaign for the seat vacated by the resignation and conviction of Representative Duke Cunningham, wasn't present in the message of the winners of Nevada, and before that, Iowa.
Louis de Cazenave died today. He was l'un des deux derniers poilus de la première guerre mondiale.
