"This site only welcomes people who voted for HRC in the GE." (EDIT: Skinner clarifies his comments)

[pat_k]

303. Why just 2016?

If "This site only welcomes people who voted for HRC in the GE," means that a person who, at the time they join or post, is committed to doing everything in their power to make sure Democrats prevail in future General Elections, and who has no intention to advocate voting against Democrats, should nevertheless be banned if they voted for Stein, or didn't vote, then the terms of service need to be revised to reflect that. They do not currently have any such principle or restriction.

And if this restriction is made explicit in the Terms of Service, it must necessarily be a blanket restriction, because the belief that underlies it is that people are incapable of evolving politically, and anyone who ever identified as a member of another party, or who voted against (or failed to vote for) the Democratic candidate is forever suspect and stained, and therefore barred from participating on this Democrats Only site.

To apply the restriction to some, but not all elections, would be capricious and arbitrary. By what objective criteria would you draw the line? Who decides which elections of the past many decades it was ok to vote "Not Democrat" and which it was not? What if the person was in a state that was safely HRC, and just cast a vote to say Yes to issues raised by a "not Dem." candidate. Do we bar all Nader voters? Do we bar all Perot voters? Do we bar all Anderson voters? McKinney voters? Is the restriction based on results? Is the problem that Hillary lost? Would you bar all "not Hillary" voters if she had won? If the objective criteria boils down to results, it would be a rule meant to punish in a way that strikes me "nasty" and therefore inconsistent with DU principles.


Is the principle that "people cannot evolve politically" really one we want to endorse as a community?