Postmortem 2016? Fuck that. How about Postmortem 2008 - 2016? That's when we the liberals screwed up
This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by uppityperson (a host of the General Discussion forum).
No, this isn't a President Obama slam fest. Far from it.
Okay, since the election, I have been wide awake and hurting like hell. I've been spending hours curled up in a fetal position and then been angry enough to slam my first through a wall. Pick any other emotion but happy and content and I've been there and I just bet you have too. But, about three days ago, I went Spock and started analyzing, very emotionless. Sure, I started with the blame game - it's the easiest and may I say, the most fun. I got over that really quickly because it's a pointless circular firing squad. We liberals and Democrats and liberal Democrats are so good at that. I wanted to feel that for a while but no more.
I went back to 2008 and I remembered President Obama told us to hold his feet to the fire. I'm not sure he said to give him political cover as that wouldn't have been a great thing to say but that's what he was trying to tell us. And I'm not going to speak for you or for DU, though if it resonates, do the gut check I've been doing (I think it's a really, really important step). President Obama didn't say "Yes I Can", he said, "Yes We Can". I didn't do it or I didn't do it well enough or I didn't have enough support, though by that time DU was famous for being a crack team when it came to holding the Bush administration accountable for their bullshit - we trained ourselves over those eight hellish years. Then, President Obama got there and after the victory, it felt like we/I deserved a break. But we didn't deserve it and President Obama didn't have us holding his feet to our liberal fire nor did he have our political cover. So he broke to the center and bipartisanship, a really safe place for the Jackie Robinson of the White House.
Am I saying he was a bad President? No, considering his base wandered away for this reason or that, he did a stellar job with the massive resistance he got from people who took our mantle of anger and beat the shit out of his Presidency. The opposition were unceasing but we/ I was not. Sure I yelled about Rahm Emmanuel and this and that but eventually, I just started drifting. I noticed that DU started infighting.
It was like when we didn't have a common enemy, we lost focus.
If you don't agree, that's okay, it's just what I perceive. And I started drifting away from here. I definitely stopped fighting. I was here some but not like during the Bush years and my activism got hung up in the closet for the most part. Mostly I noticed that when we didn't have a common enemy, DU didn't seem to know what to do. We weren't the crackpot team anymore. The infighting went way up. Befuddled is a word that comes to mind. It was tiresome and I was tired.
Then the forever primaries started and while I would have liked to come over here and laugh at the clown car that was the Republican primary, I remembered the Democratic blood bath in 2008 and wanted nothing to do with the primary on our side. I knew I was for Bernie and that I would encounter bloody divisiveness here just as I had seen between HRC and Obama sides during 2008. So, I watched on Facebook and all the wonderful spin offs from The Daily Show and TYT became my new lifeline. While I realized quickly after Bernie that I needed to vote for HRC, another four or eight years of Third Wayism wasn't something I was thrilled about and I knew I would get little support here and besides, circular firing squad. Like I said, I've noticed that when DU doesn't have a common enemy we use each other for target practice.
I, along with others on the liberal side knew Donald Trump, AKA, Pussy Grabber didn't have a chance. Nonetheless, I voted for Secretary Clinton and I GOTV, too. I did my part.
And then the election came and we all woke up to "What the Fuck!!!!" You know where I went first? Not Facebook, not my favorite comedians/real journalists. I came here. I came running and of course, as you all know, DU was hacked. While it felt awful at the time, I think the timing really helped bring home the message I needed. So, thank you hackers for making sure I had time to do a really deep gut check instead of being able to blow off steam here. And my personal gut check pulled me all the way back to 2008. I have a lot to atone for and a lot to fight against , for our children and grand children.
So, now I'm awake. So is much of America, even a lot of people who didn't vote are protesting the atrocity that is pResident Pussy Grabber. I don't think anyone deserves what is coming but coming it is and it's probably worse than our imaginings. Our children and our grandchildren need us to fight like their lives depend on it because they do. I am an ablative shield and so are you. Many of us may burn away in the process because this is going to be the greatest fight most of us have ever had to be in.
I fucked up in 2008 and beyond. I didn't hold our President's feet to the fire nor cover his back politically. I think had we done what he asked, he could have been the best President we ever had, but instead he was as good as he could be, given the fight the right constantly gave him. I am to blame. I think a lot of you are too. If you don't think you are, then just assume I'm not talking about you. I think DU as a force also failed, probably for similar reasons. But when we got complacent, the other side stayed furious and way more focused than I would have given them credit for. They had a common enemy. I'm very sorry I didn't fight for President Obama more, but they fought him unceasingly.
Bernie Sanders and Trump, in very different ways, tapped into a vein of anger and populism. We didn't want the status quo anymore. The fact that one was a force for good and one was a demagogue is both important and unimportant. Another post, another day, maybe.
But I have something else. I have the fire back in my belly and I think you do too, readers and DU et al. And here's the thing, we may have let the bike get a little rusty but once you've learned how to ride a bike (the Bush years), it takes little time to relearn and even get better riding that bike. It's going to take work and it's going to take unity but we will face this unfathomably horrific thing together and we will stand together and we will have each others backs and we will fight as if all of our lives depended on it. In fact, they do. We don't have much time to get our shit together and yet I know we will get it back together and we will get it well before the first deadline.
DU has a common purpose again and as much as I can't believe it, the Bush years were like a bike with training wheels. We don't need the training wheels anymore. We were a crackpot team and we will be a better team this time. We have to. We thought Bush/Cheney were the greatest evil America ever faced. So we learned and we rolled up our sleeves. Good thing
because this time, it's likely to be so much worse so we must be even better.
So that's a sketch of my (our) history. Some of us still need to be in the blame space. Some of us are still working through the stages of grief. I know I am, though I'm getting better every day. It's easy to say we should be past the grief by now but we all process differently. We will still be ready soon and we will be stronger than we were during the worst of the Bush years. Because we must. And we are DU. That bears repeating, in bold. We are DU. Once we are back in fighting shape, we will be like the special ops or the rangers of the resistance. We were the best and we will be the best again. Mark my words.
Now, to steal from John Oliver, if you've read this far and I remembered how to embed videos, I would give you otters, lots of them.
So, please go to YouTube and watch some otters frolic. Then get back here and let's get cracking. We have a lot of work to do.
If anyone gets offended by my post, I apologize ahead of time. I described what I did and what I saw. YMMV.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Each individually was insignificant and I'd list them here, but, I don't have all day to make lists... I'll leave that to the masters of the Facebook pulp mills.
However, two stand out to me:
1) Comey! His Hatch Act defying move was extremely damaging. (What's happening on this, anyone know? 
)
2) The Russian influence on the election. Also, supposedly being investigated by the FBI. No conflict-of-interest there, baby. A hint for the keystone-kops at the FBI (If you're even ever going to give it two seconds of thought) A good starting point for an investigation would be to check out who had very large bets placed for Trumpty-Dumpty to win. Putin had every reason in the world and everything to gain from backing the most disruptive candidate he could find.
The reality of what is happening is there is soon to be a group of people in positions of power who shouldn't be trusted with anything sharper than a pair of blunt-end Play School scissors.
Anyway, how I feel is best summarized in this previous post on the DU.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2611405
