General Discussion

to be had with conservative politicians who have entirely different incentivisation than common sense or decency for their advocacy. You want to find common ground with conservatives? Scare the fuck out of them that you actually might ram through a real progressive plan, and they may just come to the table with a compromise. Give them the compromise option up front and they have no reason to vote for it, because the worst case is that it passes anyway, and the best case is that it doesn't. The reason we can't do this has nothing to do with the conservatives, and that's the sad part. We can't get members of our own party to commit to this. That empowers the GOP to reject any compromise.

Yes, if you can create a sea-change so that Republicans know their actual job is on the line if they keep resisting something, then you can get them to compromise. Until then, what on earth do you think would get them to cross their huge financial backers? If we aren't going to go to the people and create that sea-change by getting them to demand something new, then we can continue to be the minority party, most of the time. We shouldn't be comfortable with that. So no, this isn't about whether or not working with the GOP is a problem, it is about how you work with them...how you get them to work with us. Compromising with them by losing less is not working with them, it is simply triaging.

Those of us who are Democrats and don't like the fact that we've lost 1000 seats over the last 15 years or so want us to do something that works. People are disaffected, and they distrust us because we try to be conciliatory with Wall Street, etc. We don't give people an appropriate villain to join forces against, and instead, we get to play the part of the villain based upon the GOP and media's framing. It is not working for us to simply make racists and sexists the villain. Too many people resemble that remark, and it is rhetoric not designed to show them how they are being played themselves by this divide-and-conquer bullshit, but is instead designed to put us at odds with a huge chunk of the voting populace. Which is why we keep losing. The 99% continue to be divided because we aren't interested in creating common cause.

You just cannot pretend that financial interests don't have a choke-hold on our political system in ways that are strangling us.
It is hardly a radical position, in my opinion, for us to want the democratic party to be far more progressive and aggressive with the institutions and industries that have had far too much influence on policy for far too long.

You might be right if you are of the opinion that by making them our enemy we can expect to get clobbered financially in the near future, and that there is a risk of losing more control...but if we are fighting with our hands tied behind our backs because of these industry friendships, any control is just an illusion anyway.