2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Please stop telling me I'm voting for Sanders because I'm a purist who wants a pony. [View all]carolinayellowdog
(3,247 posts)"bellowing, yowling, threatening, overpowering, monopolizing, intimidating, insulting, and insinuating insults" has been the non-stop abuse of progressives by self-proclaimed "sensible centrists" here for YEARS. The behavior towards Obama supporters by Clinton supporters back in 2007-08 had a great impact on my feelings toward both candidates and my vote for Obama in the primary. And eight years later, it's deja vu all over again. You cannot BULLY people into line, and that is far more the behavior of Clinton supporters than Sanders supporters here. It comes down to threats, open threats, about future hypothetical reasons to throw people off the site in 2016 for opinions expressed in 2015-- IF they don't toe the line and change their tune. I don't see any Sanders supporters threatening Clinton supporters with ostracism next year!
There has been an extraordinarily nasty and insulting campaign against progressives for years, and yet even now, they are far more civil and friendly than their "centrist" attackers. So when you say "Then it'd still be civil around DU" I can't help feeling that civility here was destroyed long ago, the incivility has been overwhelmingly right-vs-left here as in US society at large, and now the self-proclaimed martyrdom of Clinton supporters finding themselves in a minority has unleashed all manner of nastiness and ugliness.
Unlike most of the Sanders supporters, I'm far from convinced he can win the nomination. But he is a voice for the voiceless and if he can make Hillary listen to the 99% even slightly more, and to the 1% even slightly less, he has my primary vote.