Markos, I’m hoping this reaches you.
Your Gag Order of March 15th, which forced a great deal of people off of this site, some permanently, ultimately left us with no one to pull the fire alarm when urgently important problems began showing up for the Clinton campaign throughout the 2016 election. This “general election mode” ended up creating a great deal of smugness, complacency, and vitriol on Daily Kos, which culminated into an unimaginable catastrophe for all of us. Here were five tragic effects of this site’s crackdown on free speech:
1. The Immediate Dismissal of All Crucial Warning Signs About the State of the Race:
Now as I type this diary out I’m aware that this will approach TLDR status, so if you read anything, please read this:
One diary, written on July 16th of this year, absolutely nailed the results of the election and perfectly predicted why Trump would win. I encourage you all to go read it:
The dice have been cast
A few key points made in the diary:
“People are tired of sending politicians to Washington and having them ignore their will. TPP, Trans Canadian pipeline, Glass Steagall, anti-bankruptcy legislation and the list goes on.”
”there is a deep seated anger that wages are stagnating, Jobs are going overseas, prices of medicine and real estate, two of the basic factors of living, are skyrocketing and again as I have said politicians are not doing anything to reverse that. Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump spoke to the people that are sick and tired of politics as usual and now there is only one of these candidates left.”
“let me make a more formal prediction.
1. Trump will defeat Hillary with an over 300 electoral vote total.
2. Hillary will out fundraiser him by a 4 to 1 margin.
3. The presidential debates will be called overwhelmingly for Hillary by the pundits
4. This will depress voting in downstream races costing us seats in the House and senate.”
These four core points of this user’s prediction all turned out to be either entirely correct or correct in principle.
1. Donald Trump received 306 electoral votes.
2. Hillary outspent Trump by a massive 2-1 margin.
3. All 3 debates were called overwhelmingly for Hillary.
4. Down-ballot Democrats drastically underperformed all expectations.
That diary, which got correct both the critical problems in the Clinton campaign and the ultimate outcome of the election, was sadly flagged into oblivion, and the user is now banned. I agree with the sentiments of this diary by Angela Marx, there are a lot of people who deserve general amnesty for being banned during the ridiculous restrictions of free speech that were placed on this site, especially the user who wrote the aforementioned diary.
One of the biggest problems here was that the Gag Order completely blurred the line between left-wing and right-wing criticism of the Clintons, making it so that essentially ALL criticism was treated with the same degree of contempt by Daily Kos. Below are two of the diaries that were critical of the Clintons, but were well-thought out critiques from the left. Both of them were smacked down and their Tip Jar’s hidden.
Hillary Clinton needs to get On Board- A diary asking Hillary Clinton to take a more hardline stance against the TPP
Clinton’s Neoliberalism: A Perspective on Race, Class, Capital, and Punishment in America- An extremely thorough and fact-based look into the Bill Clinton administration’s policy record
2. The Sudden Willingness to Agree with Any and All Actions Taken by the Clinton Campaign:
One crucial turning point on this site was during the VP selection process. Here were two heartfelt diaries written in July on why Bernie Sanders should be chosen as the VP nominee, both reflecting the sentiments of a very large portion of Sanders supporters:
We Need Bernie Sanders on the Ticket
Dear Mrs. Secretary
Both of these diaries were flagged and hidden.
Many users, and to a certain degree even Kos himself, warned that Tim Kaine represents a massive setback to the Clinton campaign in securing the portions of the base that they need to turn out. These warnings were ignored, dismissed as “reflaming primary wars,” and in some cases even flagged. All of the sudden, Tim Kaine was turned into an amazing candidate who is going to win this election for us in a landslide.
Once again, here is another diary, written on July 23rd, that absolutely nails the climate of the 2016 election, and why Tim Kaine was a weak choice; this is also worth reading:
Will Tim Kaine cost us white male votes?
A few key points made in the diary:
”But I also keep seeing people defend her choice with this misguided argument: “Clinton needs to do better with white male voters, and Kaine is the best choice for that.” When asked how Kaine will help her with white male voters, they only come up with one reason: Kaine is a white male.
Dumb.
If this year’s primaries proved anything, it’s that in 2016, simple-minded identity politics don’t work.”
“Want to win white male voters? Forget running a white male candidate. Instead, run a candidate who will help white men. Run a candidate who will protect white men’s jobs, who will help white men go through college and get needed healthcare without going broke, who will protect the white men who have already gone broke from predatory lenders, who will stop the government from giving white men’s tax dollars to big banks, who will protect white male consumers from being ripped off by greedy corporations, ”
This diary, despite being a thoughtful perspective from a long time and trusted user, without a hint of RWTP or third-party advocacy, was also flagged and hidden. Nevertheless, the diary ended up being largely correct in its assertions; Donald Trump won the presidency because he overwhelmingly won white men.
But probably the saddest moment of all of this was when I saw the people of this site literally defending fracking, because Hillary Clinton supports it, and defending her remarks telling environmentalists to ”get a life.” I’ve been lurking around Daily Kos for a lot longer than I have been blogging here, and this was not the Daily Kos I knew.
3. The Demonization of Jill Stein and her Campaign:
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there were a lot of reasonable and meaningful arguments for why one should not vote for Jill Stein, but what I saw near the end of the campaign was vitriol levels rise on this site to exceptionally high levels against a candidate who largely agrees with the Left on most key issues. This ultimately culminated into a tirade of ugly name calling that lacked any kind of substance whatsoever. I was embarrassed when this diary reached the Rec List a month ago:
Please, Don’t Tell Me You’re Voting For Tofu Palin
No policy substance, no rational argument, just disgusting name calling and saying that all Jill Stein supporters are “stupid.” It’s shameful that the “Left’s biggest online community” stooped to such levels.
But in the end, there is no blaming Jill Stein for what happened on election night. Even if every single one of her supporters voted for Hillary, Trump still would have won the election because his margin of victory in Pennsylvania was greater than all of Jill Stein’s votes. Furthermore, it’s a bold assumption to think that all of her supporters would have gone to Hillary if she was not on the ballot; considering the fact that a majority of Jill’s supporters likely detested both major party candidates, a lot of them would have probably just have stayed home or voted for Gary Johnson.
So no, Jill Stein didn’t cost anybody the election. Hell, she might be the one to SAVE IT thanks to the recount effort she ignited. We owe her a massive apology.
4. The Attacks Against Nate Silver Because his Model Didn’t Give Hillary a 99% Chance to Win:
Once Nate Silver’s model showed a turn for the worse for the Clinton campaign, I was stunned to see how quickly this site turned on him. People started calling him “Nate the Pundit” despite the fact that he has a sophisticated mathematical model with the strongest track record out there. Sam Wang and Daily Kos’ model were instead touted in order to encourage the general sentiments that “we’ve got this in the bag.” This is despite the fact that no reasonable person could have believed that Hillary Clinton had a 99%+ chance to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, AND Michigan, as stated by the Daily Kos final projection, as polls showed a tight race there. For example:
Five Reasons Nate Silver is Wrong and Sam Wang is Right: Hillary is 99%+ Likely to Win
Diaries such as the one above encouraged a culture of complacency, which ended up being an unmitigated disaster. Don’t get me wrong, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that Hillary had a clear edge going in to election night. But this site let its guard down, and we paid for it.
5. The Smug, Condescending, “Fuck You” Attitude to Any and All Non-Democrats
This was the most clear culture that developed on this site after the Gag Rule was instituted, the general disgust against anyone who wasn’t a Democrat. I’m not even going to try and find all of the comments that were simply “He’s not even a Democrat” nor am I going to try to find all the comments that said “good riddance” to all people who were even remotely skeptical of the Democratic Party. But this condescending culture extended all the way up to Kos himself, who wrote in a diary in June:
The only reason to register as an independent is because you think you are too good or pure or uncorrupted to be a member of a party. And if that’s the case? Good for you! We are all duly impressed. So shiny and perfect!
But fuck you, you don’t get to pick our candidates.
I don’t walk into a Shriners meeting, tell them they all suck and I hate their fez hats and cool stupid little parade cars, then demand a say in who leads the organization. That would be absurd and I’d be laughed out of the room. So why would anyone think differently about political parties? Yeah, I’m laughing Bernie’s idea [open primaries] out of the room.
One of the greatest weakness that this site, and really the Democratic Party itself, had during this election cycle was the derision it had towards independents. Saying “fuck you” to potential new Democrats, yeah, great strategy.
Being a Democrat doesn’t mean you are a saint, it doesn’t mean you are any more or less pure than anyone else, it doesn’t mean you are better than anyone else, it means you are affiliated with the Democratic Party. And you know what, I’m a Democrat! But it’s time to stop caring about whether someone has a D next to their name, and it’s time to start caring about whether they stand for the ideas that made the Democratic Party great in the first place.
After all, you know who is a Democrat? This guy:
But what about this guy on the right here?
Just ask yourself this question, who better reflects core Democratic ideals, Bernie Sanders or Joe Manchin?
Democrats made up 36% of the electorate this year. That is not a winning number; we must become more welcoming of those outside the party. Only 42% of all independents voted for Hillary Clinton this year. We can do better.
And I’m giving this long evaluation of Daily Kos because I understand that it truly has a lot of potential to reach a lot of people. It is one of the most visited sites in the world. It is a fundraising powerhouse and an incredibly influential force in the Democratic Party, and I want to see it do well. This is why it greatly alarmed me to see Daily Kos, a meaningful link to the Democratic machine, ignoring some of the most crucial aspects and warning signs of the 2016 election. This was largely thanks to Markos’ crackdown on free speech.
So ask yourself, what did you let your site become, Kos? And I say this as someone who genuinely cares about Daily Kos. I love it here- I love the community- and the only way I’m going is with a skull and crossbones next to my name. But I’m sincerely petitioning you: never do this crackdown on free speech again.
Thank you for reading this! If this diary somehow found its way to Kos, I would be ecstatic.