A Quick Reminder for This Primary Season [View all]

[bravenak]

I saw a post that I find very important to the discourse on our lovely site. In an attempt to clarify the rules, this was posted to give us more info on the TOS. In order to keep us all here together and fighting for the Democratic party, I am reposting this for all and sundry. Very sensible post.

Star Member Skinner (60,834 posts)
1. You are correct.

Based on the Terms of Service, we have grounds to ban anyone who states that they do not intend to vote for the Democratic nominee in any general election. There is a popular misconception that the "Vote for Democrats" rule only applies after a nominee has been chosen, but that is not correct. The use of the term "never" is intentional in the section you quoted above.

So the next question, of course, is why so many people have been permitted to claim here on DU that they won't vote for the Democratic nominee, and have not been banned for saying so. The reason is because the admins believe that most people who say this in the context of a contested presidential primary don't actually mean it. Some of them say it because they think threatening to withhold one's vote might be a persuasive argument in favor of their preferred primary candidate. (It isn't.) And in other cases they say it because they really believe it at that moment when they are caught up in the heat of the primary campaign, but once the primary is over they suck it up and do the right thing. We have seen this over and over again on DU after previous contested primary campaigns when the vast, vast majority of people went on to support the nominee.

The DU Terms of Service actually gives a nod to this and contains a clause that a certain amount of ambivalence toward Democrats is understandable:

During the ups-and-downs of politics and policy-making, it is perfectly normal to have mixed feelings about the Democratic officials we worked hard to help elect. When we are not in the heat of election season, members are permitted to post strong criticism or disappointment with our Democratic elected officials, or to express ambivalence about voting for them.

I want to be clear that that the Terms of Service remain unchanged, and members are still permitted to express their ambivalence about voting for the eventual nominee. The DU administrators have been allowing members a significant amount of leeway in our interpretation of that clause, but is a limit to how far we are willing to go.

Unfortunately, there are some people here who who say they won't support the nominee and actually won't. As we explained above, our feeling is that we want to give people the benefit of the doubt. But if you convince us that you actually mean it and you really aren't going to support the nominee, then we're going to treat you like you actually mean it. That person who started the OP telling people to sign the pledge that they won't support the Democratic nominee was very convincing, and is no longer a member of DU.

From the Terms of Service:

Democratic Underground is an online community for politically liberal people who understand the importance of working within the system to elect more Democrats and fewer Republicans to all levels of political office.

That's the bottom line.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12598967