Once the dust settles...

[Docreed2003]

Last edited Mon Dec 28, 2015, 08:36 AM - Edit history (1)

I fully admit that I bounce between sites like DU, where I lurked for years, and other left leaning message boards and news. I lived through the '08 primary season, with all of its outrage and glory online. This year is so very different. This year we have three strong candidates, and the supporters of two of the three seem to be content to throw poop bombs and innuendo against the other camp because they feel like they are rooting for "their team". Now, I've left the MOM supporters out of this intentionally because I have yet to see them spew the kind of bile and vitriol that Clinton and Sanders supporters have thrown on the interwebs, neither here or on other sites or social media. This election will have consequences, the balance of the Supreme Court and the age of several justices being only a small but significant part of that equation. At this moment, the country faces the absolute worst of the Tea Party movement and all of its associated stances. As Democrats, we must stand against the rise of bigotry, misogyny, and overt racism from the right. No matter who ends up being the Democratic nominee, we must fight against the rising tide of the right.

So, my question to all of you is this. After the dust settles, how will we all come together to fight the right? I realize that DU is a limited worldview, but there have been so many vile and atrocious posts from all sides, how do we as a community survive past the primary season?

I fully support policy debates and wonky discussions of particular stances, but things have become so personal for many here that I fear that a huge portion of the electorate will be so angry and disinterested in the general that whomever the GOP nominee is, they sail to the White House.

So, I say all that to say this: left, center, center right, DLC, green, Socialist Democrat or other...we must be able to find common ground with those on our side, even if we disagree, in order to continue the fight against the far right.

Please, before you post an attack on a candidate or a poster, think about your words. Will your post be so divisive that it turns someone away from the Democratic Party? We are currently cannibalizing ourselves. I am a leftist to my core and always will be, but I have enough sense to know that some will disagree and I can find common ground with others. The right, as disfunctional as they are, could very well take this next presidential election.

So, I implore all of us, please...focus on policy and not personal attacks. The future of this country is to important to cede ground to those on the far right.

[elleng]

1. Thanks, Docreed,

and welcome to DU.

[Docreed2003]

3. Thanks Elleng....

Perhaps it's my consumption of red wine tonight, but I am just so fed up and tired of the infighting. Much of it is petty and driven by perspectives that support a given candidate. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to you and yours!!

[elleng]

5. You're right, it is full of those things.

I'm pleased you recognize we MO'M supporters don't play those games.

FYI, when you can, there's a lot of info here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1281

Happy Holidays!

[enid602]

2. Hill supporter here

I will support any candidate that wins the nomination. Period.

[Docreed2003]

4. Agree 1000%...

And I'm a Sanders supporter. We are all fighting for the best of the country and our side shouldn't be viewed as enemies. Thank you for your comment...

[oasis]

6. Democrats will remain once the dust settles. Impostors will be

forced to depart.

[daleanime]

9. The unity....

is strong in this one.

[MisSpentYth]

7. Agree!

I still haven't decided who I will vote for in the Primaries. I'm partial to Bernie at the moment. However, when it comes to presidential election, I will wholeheartedly back whomever is chosen as the democratic candidate. Like the OP mentioned, we are already way too divided as a country... I'm hoping, at the very least, we can come together and support the essential values of our political party as a whole. Even if it is seen as the lesser of two evils...

[Old Codger]

8. Great post

Sanders supporter here but also will vote for whoever is the nominee. I agree with the OP, we cannot and must not allow the divisiveness that is so prevalent now to carry over into the GE. We need to pull it together for the fight that is coming up in the GE ...If right wing wins we will all be in the same sinking boat..


welcome to DU Docreed

[Docreed2003]

10. Thanks so much...

Thank you for your post

[Rebkeh]

11. Re post this after the primary

and I'm all ears. It's early yet, this is not a red v blue conflict, it's a hashing out of who we are going to be as a country.

My answer depends on the outcome of the primary anyway.

[Docreed2003]

12. And I have no problem with that whatsoever...

My biggest issue is the daily stream of down right obnoxious vitriol that has nothing to do with actual policy and the celebratory, in your face, "nah-nah" poll posts suggesting "my candidate is better than yours and here's why", without any discussion of real issues. There is no doubt that this is a watershed election for this country, and I am passionately fighting for my particular candidate; however, my post was intended to shine a light on how vicious and ugly many of us on this site have become, and to point out that there will come a time where we will need to reconcile, if we haven't already pushed ourselves too far apart

[murielm99]

13. I will do what I have done since 1972.

I will vote for the nominee in the GE. I will vote for the person I like in the primary, but support the choice of the party.

There are people here who are saying that they will not support the primary winner by working for them or contributing financially, but they will vote for that person. I have never done that. Once we have a nominee, I am in. The nominee gets my money, my time, my vote.

I agree that this primary season is bad. I won't say anything snarky in this thread. Your intent seems to be peace.

I can't go along with staying home if the party chooses someone I don't like. That is the same as voting Republican.

[billhicks76]

14. Clinton Pushed The Center To The Right

And thus cultural right wing warriors always feel a need to differentiate themselves from us. That's just a law of reality. To do so they had to go off the deep end into crazyland. What people here need to realize is that the Clintons are responsible for this.

[JDPriestly]

15. I try to focus on policy and not on personal attacks.

But I will repeat that I will vote for every Democrat on my ballot except Hillary should she win the primary.

I do not want a vote for Hillary on my conscience.

Here is an issue that troubles me greatly:

Hillary's relationship with Henry Kissinger and her embrace of his foreign policy theories.

Hillary Clinton often plays the hawk card: She voted for the Iraq war, dissed President Barack Obama for not being tough enough on Syria, and compared Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. This is to be expected from a politician who has angled for a certain title: the first female president of the United States. Whether her muscular views are sincerely held or not, a conventional political calculation would lead her to assume it may be difficult for many voters to elect as commander-in-chief a woman who did not project an aggressive and assertive stance on foreign policy. So her tough talk might be charitably evaluated in such a (somewhat) forgiving context. Yet what remains more puzzling and alarming is the big wet kiss she planted (rhetorically) on former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger this week, with a fawning review of his latest book, World Order.

Sure, perhaps there is secretary's privilege—an old boy and girls club, in which the ex-foreign-policy chiefs do not speak ill of each other and try to help out the person presently in the post. Nothing wrong with that. But former-Madam Secretary Clinton had no obligation to praise Kissinger and publicly participate in his decades-long mission to rehabilitate his image. In the review, she calls Kissinger a "friend" and reports, "I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state. He checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels." She does add that she and Henry "have often seen the world and some of our challenges quite differently, and advocated different responses now and in the past." But here's the kicker: At the end of the review, she notes that Kissinger is "surprisingly idealistic":

Even when there are tensions between our values and other objectives, America, he reminds us, succeeds by standing up for our values, not shirking them, and leads by engaging peoples and societies, the sources of legitimacy, not governments alone.

Kissinger reminds us that America succeeds by standing up for its values? Did she inhale?

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/hillary-clinton-henry-kissinger-world-order

I had to read one of Kissinger's first books way back in a college class in the 1960s. It nauseated me then, and I do not understand why, after all the failures and bad situations we got into, after all the damage to our national reputation due to the adventures that he counseled, he is still listened to.

And above all, why is Hillary such an admirer?

Argentina anyone?

Guatemala?

Cambodia?

Johnson's peace talks with the Vietnamese?

How many lives would have been saved if Johnson had been able to negotiate peace with Viet Nam in 1968 without the interference and meddling of Kissinger?

And that is just one of the problems I have with Hillary's policy stances.

It's not about Hillary for me.

It's about Hillary's weak and far too right-wing for my tastes stances on the issues that are the problem.

I want Bernie to be our next president. Nothing less will do.

[corkhead]

17. Don't worry, we will see who the Republicons nominate and all fall in line.

[djean111]

18. There really needs to be a Pledge-y Thing group. Really really.

The time for this stuff is after the primaries. Trotting it out before a single vote has been cast seems odd.
And there really isn't anything at all the GOP does not know about or plan to throw at any Dem candidate.