I used to play video games with my sister. She's very competitive and I respected her for that, and we'd throw down at Cool Boarders 2 for the PS1 for hours at a time. It was all well and good, until I started winning races too many times in a row. She could trash talk with the best of them, but if I gave it back to her while on a streak of my own, she'd throw down her controller, flip me the bird, and tear out of the room angry.
That's the "strikers".
"abusive?" comments, Allegre?
Hillary supporters are in the minority at DKos to be sure, and having your opinion piled upon may not be fun, but did they consider the reasons they are in the minority?
At the point where Obama emerged as a true contender, they began taking off in droves to sites that were already completely partisan for Hillary - - Taylor Marsh's site, TalkLeft, myDD, No Quarter, etc. - sites whose focus has been pretty much 100% anti-Obama posts, while the places supposedly in the tank for Obama, while also trashing Clinton, were actually still fighting for liberal issues, and more importantly, watching out for McCain and the good of the party.
They are free to call DKos an Obama stronghold, and you know what, on this they are absolutely right - but what does walking out do for them at all? Does it change the mind of any voter whatsoever? No. It just reconfirms what has been in my mind all along - they can't make a proper case for their candidate, like Hillary's campaign itself - she can't win by pulling herself and her supporters up, she can only attempt to push Obama down.
Any Hillary supporter with passion and an intelligent case has my full respect, and my ear. I don't even get a vote but I stick my nose in because the face of America to the world is too important right now to ignore. I have friends who are Hillary supporters as well and we've had many useless, but respectful, arguments as if we were trying to win votes from each other - everyone is caught up in this campaign all around the world - its that competitive.
But I have absolutely no respect for these "strikers" whatsoever. Their walkout is their own failure to make a case, their own failure to rally people around their arguments. They claim for months and months that Obama isn't tough enough, that this is politics, and that the Republicans will be throwing the book at him in the fall... but they pull this weak crap? They can't toughen up?
I've taken heaps of abuse at many of the sites I listed, have had comments deleted and edited... its stupid but its not my site, and I expect as much walking into the lions den. The "strikers" though seem to want to have their cake and eat it too, they want their partisan rah-rah sites like Taylor Marsh's, and they expect all other liberal blogs to be at least 50/50. They've thrown down the PlayStation controller and left the room. Good riddance.