Sanders, an unapologetic socialist with an unmatched ability to invigorate young voters,

… and annoy everyone else. So long as we’re talking good and bad politics, I submit that anger as good politics has a relatively short half-life. As one millennial put it to me, “anger is a valid emotion.” To which, if good manners had not been in order, I would have replied “So the f*ck what?” Be as angry as you want, but don’t expect to be able to transfer anger as easily as you could transfer information, and understand that the angrier you are, the less likely I am to accept information from you.

Yes, sometimes a very thorough analysis leads to seriously righteous anger, but that’s not how our politics works. Too many conspiracy-theory bozos evince the same “righteous” anger as those with good cause to be steamed. Elector Americanus has a very poor signal/noise filter. Most of us equate anger with prejudice and/or resentment, not thought. When anger arises from thought, the art of the possible requires that it be expressed as urgency rather than enmity. In my view, that’s why the angry candidates — Sanders and Warren — fared so poorly in this cycle. Trump was elected out of anger. Democrats want to be better than that.

Bernie was especially bad at hiding his resentments. Voters are naturally suspicious that his analysis is wrong because he so obviously hates the people it faults. We can’t prove that Bernie’s politics is just confirmation bias on stilts, but we can sense and fear that it is, and that’s reason enough to vote for someone else. And so we did.