The trouble with such candidate machines is that they fundamentally are not party organs; their supporters back the individual candidates who founded them, not the party.

The dirty little secret, which no Democrat ever admits on the record, is that the OFA exists essentially because the party is no longer working. So OFA has taken over the party and refashioned it from the ground up around Obama.

This will have a devastating impact on the party because it has enabled OFA to act as a predator, while the party has failed to groom its own partisan bench for the future.

Then there is the Michael Bloomberg factor: The New York mayor’s anti-gun lobby hurts Democrats by supporting only pro-gun-control elected officials, essentially shrinking the Democrats’ coalition.

Finally, there’s the disconnect that Democrats have encountered with blue-collar whites and Main Street voters. That began way back in 2000 with Al Gore’s presidential campaign, but it escalated with President Obama’s class-warfare-themed reelection in 2012.