Those who accuse progressives of calling for "purity tests" want this party to stand for nothing.

[Ken Burch]

44. This thread isn't even about the Sanders vs. Clinton contest.

And I'm not trying to make anyone's vote less equal to anyone else's.

I'm talking about those who use the accusation of a call for "purity tests" to bully everyone into voting(in primary contests for a lot of seats in the U.S. House and in more Senate races than are ever justified)for the less progressive candidate when we almost never have to do that.

For example, I'm talking about all the pressure the Democratic establishment brought to bear to stop Donna EdwardsI(an African-American HRC supporter)from winning the Maryland U.S. Senate nomination in favor of a bland, dreary hack. There was no reason to think said hack was going to do any better in the fall, yet the pressure was brought to bear to push him through anyway.

Or the campaign in Florida, when the party is moving heaven and earth to make sure we nominate a conservative who was best known for managing to lose his U.S. House seat when he should have been able to count on winning it again easily.

Or all of those who insist that we have to keep economic justice issues(which are equally important in everyone's lives to social justice issues, and which if not addressed will always end up creating the conditions for the kind of backlash politics that are used to destroy social justice gains-as always happened in the late Sixties and Seventies and Eighties, as you will recall) in the platform, and also can't ever expect the platform and our candidates to break with militarism and greed.

This wasn't a presidential politics thread at all, and that's why I didn't post it in GD;P . So back off. You've got no grounds for sanctimony here. I'm just as committed to fighting homophobia, racism and sexism as you are.