That's the problem right there, they don't NEED a leader. Every Congressional district is full of - people, who can be approached by - people. Trump didn't so as much as win, as much as Democrats lost, for backing a wounded horse. Had Clinton any decency, she would have bowed out early enough for someone else to have a shot. Democratic leadership continued to back her anyway, because she'd locked up all the big money donors during her tenure as Secretary of State. Bad move - and fatal.

Instead of "leadership" telling registered democrats what they will be "for or against", the rank and file need to take control of their own party at the county level, which will give them control at the State level and ultimately allow THEM to tell the leadership what THEY will be "for or against" - the way this was designed from the start. The wheelers and dealers have destroyed BOTH party's - and we all are suffering the consequences.

Sure hope he is taken out of office soon, the i***t is a big wind turbine electricity fan, too myopic to research it and discover that these turbines operate at about 20 percent efficiency due to maintenance problems, changing wind conditions zero miles an hour to 100 plus miles per hour, sometimes within a 24 hour period, line surge, line loss, insurance issues, t***sformer costs and more. Yet he over looks the FACT that NYS has exceptionally extensive shale oil and gas reserves in the Marcellus and Utica deposits. An amount of reserves here to provide energy for more that the next more than two hundred years. BTW, the Marcellus has been used since 1808, yes, two hundred nine years! Utica, essentially untouched.

Yeah, the poor fella is just trying to play to his base; g***n e****y good, f****l f**ls bad.

I read an article a while back that this country has more oil than the Middle East combined. The reason for not tapping into it was because we were saving it in case of WWIII. It also went on to say, that it would take about ten years to get it up and flowing, and if we started the project ten years ago, we could be energy independent for the next 800 years and today we be paying about 27 cents a gallon at the pump.

The Democratic Party has a leadership vacuum at the top, with many registered v**ers eager to see someone who is not currently on the scene become the party’s standard-bearer in 2020, according to a new Harvard-Harris Poll survey provided exclusively to The Hill.

When registered v**ers were asked whom they view as the leader of the Democratic Party, 40 percent said it has no leader.

Fifteen percent named former President Obama as the party’s leader. Twelve percent said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has gone out of his way not to join the Democratic Party despite running for the its p**********l nomination last year.Eleven percent view Sen. Elizabeth Warren(D-Mass.) as the party’s leader, and 10 percent answered with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic p**********l nominee.
On the question of who should be a Democratic p**********l candidate in 2020, Sanders led the field, at 14 percent, followed by former first lady Michelle Obama at 11 percent, Warren at 9 percent, Clinton at 8 percent, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo each at 4 percent, and television personality Oprah Winfrey and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) each at 3 percent.

Forty-five percent said they want to see someone not on the list of possible candidates in the survey.

“There is a vacuum now in the Democratic Party in terms of leadership and a 2020 candidate, so it’s the Democrats who might have a raft of candidates next time, especially if the v**ers are searching for someone new,” said Harvard-Harris co-director Mark Penn.

When Clinton was taken out of the list of potential 2020 candidates, Sanders’s support went up to 18 percent, followed by Michelle Obama at 14 percent and Warren at 10 percent. No other candidate received more than 4 percent support, and 44 percent of respondents said they want someone not on the list.

“Michelle Obama has some potential as a future candidate if she was interested in politics,” Penn said.

Barack Obama has said his wife “will never run for office,” though she remains hugely popular among Democrats.

The party is in the midst of a full-scale rebuilding project after the 2016 e******ns, in which it lost control of the White House and failed to win majorities in either the House or Senate.

Democratic ranks have also faced serious defeats at the state level, where the party has lost about 1,000 legislative seats since Obama took office. Republicans control 69 of 99 legislative chambers across the country and 33 of 50 governor mansions.

Democrats took the first step in setting a new path forward last month when former Obama administration Labor Secretary Tom Perez defeated Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Sanders acolyte, to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Still, the party lacks a consensus leader at a time when there are deep and lingering divisions between grassroots liberals and mainstream establishment Democrats.

The partisan breakdown of the Harvard-Harris survey is 37 percent Democratic, 30 percent Republican, 28 percent independent and 5 percent other.

When only Democrats are taken into account, the figures shift slightly.

Thirty-five percent of Democrats said their party has no leader. Sixteen percent picked Barack Obama or Warren as the leader, followed by Sanders at 14 percent and Clinton at 8 percent.

Twenty-five percent of Democrats said they want someone not on the poll’s list of possibilities to be their p**********l candidate in 2020. Twenty percent said Sanders should be the nominee, followed by Michelle Obama at 17 percent, Warren at 15 percent, Clinton at 10 percent, Cuomo and Booker each at 4 percent, Winfrey at 3 percent and Cuban at 2 percent.

Overall, 40 percent of respondents had a favorable view of the Democratic Party, compared with 60 percent who viewed it negatively. Republicans were seen similarly, 41 percent favorable to 59 percent unfavorable.

But Republicans had a far more positive view of their own party, with 79 percent saying they had a favorable view of the GOP. Only 65 percent of Democrats had a favorable view of their own party.

Among all the registered v**ers surveyed, 46 percent said the Democratic Party is becoming more liberal, 43 percent said it is staying the same, and 11 percent said it is moving to the right. A majority of Democrats, 56 percent, said the party is staying the same, while 30 percent said it is becoming more liberal and 14 said it is becoming more conservative.

Forty-nine percent of all those surveyed said the GOP is becoming more conservative, while 36 percent said it is staying the same and 16 percent said it is becoming more liberal. Among just Republicans, 43 percent said their party is staying the same, 39 percent said it is becoming more conservative, and 19 said it is becoming more liberal.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/324903-for-democrats-no-clear-leader

I couldn't agree more. It's not just the leadership, though. Anyone who buys into what they're peddling is also suffering from a similar vacuum. The good news is that there is a simple observational test for identifying them. Simply look directly into one ear and if there's daylight getting through from the other side, you found one. Once identified, I suggest you place a big 'D' on their forehead in indelible pen and move on. Best not to talk or interact with them, they are very unstable and likely to violently erupt at the possibility that you are providing logical conversation. They see common sense and plain logic as existential threats.