A plea to Bernie Sanders supporters.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

18. True.

The PoC slur is nasty but easily rebutted. And of course there are all kinds of attacks here on Bernie and his supporters. That's the kind of stuff that gets me pissed off and before you know it I'm in a thread where everybody is raising alerts.

I'm trying to distinguish between vigorous debate and unnecessarily alienating people who may well be allies after the nomination. Of course there are tribalists who cannot be made to see sense. In that case, all we can do is state the facts.

I would also point out that Bernie is deliberately avoiding going negative because the facts are on his side. Hillary has a heavily-checkered record and he does not. More importantly, she can't speak very effectively extemporaneously about populist themes because she doesn't believe it.

Hell yes, let's debate. The facts are overwhelmingly on our side. But let's try to transcend some of the infantile tribalism and alligator-brain responses that are self-defeating for our larger purpose. We can't keep the HRC side of the street clean, only they can do that. But given that we are facing the end of history without a president like Bernie, we have a moral imperative to keep our side of the street clean.