- Too many pros are posting; Dudes, I can read what you think in your campaign literature. Identify yourself or shut up.
- Organized rec-ing wrecks the system. The top ten list has become predictable. Same people, same issues, same snore.
- We can't do anything about Iowa unless we live in Iowa. Likewise New Hanpshire. Sorry, but that's just the truth of it. This means diarists and commenters who are not from Iowa have no business posting distant tea-leaf reading. If you were here in the fall of 2003, you know how pointless it is.
- The primary season is basically a long game of gotcha, in which the candidates try their hardest not to do or say anything that will cause blog-bound supporters of other candidates to draw dramatic conclusions about their unfitness for high office. Blogreading becomes like watching rabid soccer parents of children you don't know. High intensity. Violent emotions. Susie manged to complete a lateral pass. Somebody botched a question. This constitutes BREAKING news?
- On some level we know our passion is false. Next fall we're going to back the candidate, or at least the great majority of us are. Doesn't anybody remember how vicious the anti-Kerry people were in the last primary season? They were devastated when he later lost to Bush. We all were.
What to do about it? Well, I've been hoping the community would find a way to sort itself out and stop wasting its breath. So far, no luck. Maybe I'm old. Maybe I'm the only one who wants original analysis and fresh ideas and camaraderie on the rec list. It would make sense right now to take a breath and ask ourselves how we can help the process get better.
In the meantime, all of you who can't resist pissing matches with people who support other candidates, know that you sound a lot like freepers. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
I have a couple of suggestions . . . one is to spend 10 minutes every so often reading what the wingers are writing about Hillary, John, and Barack. It's remarkably stupid, and sadly not that different from some things you can find here. Why are we doing their work for them?
Two is to create a special primary-season-only diary list for Candidate Specials. The rec list could return to normal, by which I mean that it would reflect the actual interests of the community and not the organized enthusiasm of people with an agenda.