Sanders campaign attacks Clinton for hosting fundraiser with Clooney

[RaphaelDLG]

I'm very sympathetic to the intelligent arguments that people like Virginia are making that you have to help people downballot and you have to arm yourself against people like the Kochs, but the strategy of fighting fire with fire that the Democratic Party has used for the past 2-3 decades hasn't really worked, it's simply resulted in a Democratic Party that has had to by necessity move further to the right on economic issues/become much more corporate/crony capitalist in order to get "wins."

This is a "winning" strategy in the short-term/from a political standpoint, but a losing strategy in the long-term/from a policy standpoint. 

The Democratic party moved to the right during the previous decades not because of the influence of big money but because whenever it fielded left-wing candidates it kept losing by landslide margins (McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis).
On the contrary, despite being the party who benefited most from Wall Street money until 2008 it didn't hesitate to enact Dodd-Frank which permanently alienated many of its big donors and sent them into the open arms of GOP.

I refuse to believe that, in either of those three situations, the candidates lost because they weren't big enough fans of deregulation, laissez-faire economics, and crony capitalism.  McGovern lost because of Vietnam/crime, Dukakis lost because of being soft on crime, and Mondale was tied to Carter, and all three were very uncharismatic candidates perceived as weak on foreign policy/law and order running against highly unfavorable fundamentals.

[Beet]

In order to revitalize the Democratic party/help American pols serve the interest of working folks rather than big donors, there needs to be 1) more political activity among regular folks 2) more knowledge of the corrupting influence of campaign finance among regular folks 3) a group of pols with the credibility to say that they are the solution to this problem.

This will take some time and courage and result in short-term losses, but in the long-term, it will be much better for America.

Why would it take "short-term losses"? Because opposing the corrupting influence of campaign finance is unpopular? I no more will believe this, than you will believe that Dukakis lost for not supporting crony capitalism. The party needs to stand for reform of the political finance system.

Your missed the most important part in your list of 3 solutions though: Actually fixing the problem! That will take a new set of laws that lay out a workable, sustainable and constitutional political finance system that can last long into the future, while largely neutralizing the disproportionate influence of the rich. In my view, elections should be publicly funded wholesale, with much lower cap s on donations (about $250), but with matched donations.