In tonight's stream, Kos provided a response to an earlier diary post. Fantastic! While I truly enjoy this site, and the opportunities that it provides for left-leaning collaboration, I do have a number of rebuttal points, which I've addressed point-by-point for what I hope is an illuminating read. Follow me below the orange squiggle for more...
I'll address them all, point-by-point:
So what does that have to do with me and Sanders? Nothing. He's not crashing any gates. He's a freakin' senator. He's already on the inside, a respected candidate of one of only two major parties, and one of just 100 members of the nation's most influential club. You don't crash any gate with Tad Devine. You ring the doorbell and get ushered in.
How glib! As if Sanders is part of the Democratic establishment... which he's clearly not, as evidenced by the lack of corporate support. Yes, he's not some complete outsider to the U.S. federal government, but to equate him with being part of the insider clique of the DNC is quite a stretch.
Furthermore, Sanders' mostly white, mostly male, mostly highly educated supporters aren't exactly the kind that historically sit outside the gate. Those getting shot and killed and deported outside that gate are currently supporting Clinton. Brutally ironic, that.
Assuming facts not in evidence. That might be true for earlier iterations of polls and support for Sanders, that's not necessarily the case now -- one-quarter of my attendees were latino, one-quarter female. It's also based on name- and issue-recognition from weeks ago in a still-developing grass-roots effort.
You're excited about Sanders. That is genuinely awesome! Me, I'm too much of a realist to get too excited about a guy that will get blown out once the votes are counted, nor one who—10 years later—didn't learn from the mistakes of the Howard Dean campaign and work for a more inclusive campaign. (Yeah yeah, his campaign is supposedly now 25% people of color? How many are in his inner circle who make actual decisions? None, that's how many.)
Ironically, the criticisms of Sanders on race are the EXACT SAME CRITiCISMS I made about Daily Kos proper. I'm not throwing stones from a glass house. I'm acknowledging this as a fundamental problem in which I myself share. So if I'm "attacking" Sanders for it, I'm attacking myself for it too. And yes, it's an attack. It's 2015, our party is 40 percent people of color, overwhelmingly female. It's a travesty that our institutions and campaigns (and this website) don't reflect that. As a Latino and liberal, that shit matters to me, and you dismiss it at your own peril.
Self-defeating, much? I get those same criticisms with folks I meet, which are probably similar to those faced by Obama supporters in the 2007-2008 campaign cycle. Given that several polls (including this
one) -- at this very early part of the cycle -- have put Sanders ahead of numerous GOP candidates, I'm not sure where the "realist" edge starts and ends. By all means, please illuminate us readers on that distinction!
But for those of you who are convinced this is a thing, you have to understand that your paranoia and craziness isn't winning any votes. Remember, Clinton is over 50 percent in every poll, so to win, Sanders has to win undecideds AND eat into Clinton's support. So ask yourself—are your actions and the conspiracy mongering and all that craziness—is it winning any votes? Because if not, then what's the point?
To be sure, there's a fine line between craziness and enthusiasm -- just look at Sarah Palin's supporters during the 2008 election cycle. However, the negative polling
numbers for Clinton suggest that there's a lot of weakness there. Specifically, it's not that there are just a lot of people enthusiastically supporting Sanders, it's that there aren't any for Clinton. It's not a conspiracy theory, it's a lack of acknowledgement about an enthusiasm gap.
So, on to the meat of the arguments:
1) If I'm an evil conservadem profiteering Clinton plant, then why are you supporting that evil by being here? Now that is obviously nonsense crazy shit, but if you really believe it, then why are you still here?
We're here because we love the site and the opportunity to talk with our political brethren. Let's not get silly here because we disagree on a particular candidate in the
primary. If you can't handle the stress -- and that goes doubly for the Sanders supporters! -- then don't enter the fray of political discussions. For the record, I don't think that Kos is a) a Clinton "plant", or b) a paid Clinton proponent, but rather caught in the DC-/DNC-centric view of what "can" win.
2) Are you helping Bernie Sanders win? If I was a big supporter, I'd be putting pressure on the campaign to diversify, and I don't mean someone deep down the social media team, but in that inner circle that is helping him make strategic and messaging decisions. Sanders' biggest hit of his campaign came at Netroots Nation, and you getting defensive or angry about the confrontation doesn't change the fact that he was unprepared for the situation. A better staff would've prepared him. As a supporter, you should demand that, not close ranks and insist all is well and the only problem is other people being mean.
I also wouldn't be raging assholes online. Doing so isn't winning you any supporters here at Daily Kos, and it certainly isn't putting forth a good face for the campaign on Twitter and other mainstream social media. You Sanders supporters are his grassroots ambassadors, yet your tactics are so over-the-top hysterical that you're actively doing harm to his chances.
First, let's note that "raging assholes" is a relative term -- just because the left-leaning community called you out on a questionable
piece in
The Hill doesn't make them worthy of such an epithet (let's save that term for pundits like David Brooks or Charles Krauthammer). Second, the issue of Sanders at Netroots Nation -- which I admit, I did not attend -- was, to me, a conflicted matter: no-one on either the Democratic or the Republican side of the Presidential candidates has been consistent on the #BlackLivesMatter issue, especially when interrupted in the middle of a presentation. As implied earlier, Sanders himself has been involved in the civil rights movement since the beginning, and the Sanders campaign has been working on minority and economic issues consistently in recent weeks. Eliminate the "inevitability" presumption, and one has to argue which Democratic candidate has been more consistent on civil rights issues. I'm also former military, which allows me the latitude to ask about which candidate has voted to send predominantly minority U.S. military forces into harm's way (hint: it isn't Sanders).
3) Don't play this bullshit "more liberal than thou" crap if you can't bother to fight for other great progressive candidates. I've tried to get people excited about Donna Edwards, who would be a huge ally to the Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.
I totally agree on this point, with the allowance that Donna Edwards hasn't always been a straight Democratic voter in the House; the more cynical of us among the members of your site don't look at speeches, but actions -- "don't listen to what they say, look at what they do." Regardless, to borrow a brilliant phrase, we should all support "more and better Democrats" in our voting. If there are good candidates on the Democratic side of the ledger, we're happy to support them. You draw a false dichotomy -- it's not "more liberal than thou", but rather "do you vote for progressive positions." Please don't confuse the two.
So worry less about me, and worry more about what you can do to build Bernie's support base. That's what Crashing the Gates was all about. And then maybe, just maybe, you can end up proving me wrong, and wouldn't that be the sweetest revenge of all?
In this, I totally agree -- I would love to prove you wrong on this, as much as I appreciate and respect you for setting up this site. In the end, though, I ask a simple question: where is the grassroots
enthusiasm for Hillary, at the same time that there's so
much for Bernie? The answer to that will tell you much about the 2016 Presidential election.
** Full disclosure: I held a #Bernie2016 party in my home last night, but I am only a volunteer with the campaign and not a staffer within it.
Edit: Minor change to the title regarding the response target -- nothing within the text changed, however. Thanks for the support!