Since it seems that many here are petulant enough to support Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and/or John McCain in the general election if their preferred Democratic primary candidate does not become the nominee, I propose a change to the Daily Kos mission statement.
Before we get into that below the fold, please note that I am not targeting any specific group of disgruntled supporters. After Iowa, angry Hillary supporters emailed me about their desire to vote McCain in the fall if Hillary was not the nominee. All along during this primary, many Edwards supporters have voiced the same sentiment with respect to Hillary winning the nomination. And today I saw several diarists proclaim their desire to vote for theocon Mike Huckabee in the fall.
Therefore, it is obvious that Kossacks are not committed Democrats, liberals or progressives. Indeed, you cannot be a committed or principled Democrat, liberal or progressive if you allow (or even downright vote for) a Republican candidate who is committed to destroying all that you hold dear and champion.
Hopefully I am wrong, and that anger and disappointment has overwhelmed common sense, especially considering that each of our three leading Democratic candidates differ almost not at all on the issues that matter.
But that remains to be seen.
In fact, I suspect that many here, especially diehard progressive activists, just enjoy living under Republican rule because they operate more effectively in the opposition. And it makes sense, since the problem that plagues our progressive activists is that they pursue only their important single issue, to the exclusion of most if not all others. They think not about the larger picture, about advancing all progressive causes. They only concentrate on their own tree. Their own single issue. It is easier to do that in the opposition. Markos and Jerome spoke about this in Crashing the Gates. If you are in the opposition, you can more effectively concentrate on your single issue. If you are part of a governing coalition or part of a winning campaign, then you might actually have to compromise once and awhile.
So lets revise the motto of Daily Kos, shall we?
This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog, so long as my favorite Democrat leads the party. If my favorite Democrat does not lead the party, then this is a Republican blog, for we will support the Republican candidate so as to convince our other misguided Democrats that we, and only we, are right. One that recognizes that Democrats can only run as we want them to run. There will be no deviation whatsoever from our priorities or tactics or even clothing style. We are all in this fight together so long as we lead the fight. It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: ideological purity and continued Republican control of the government. We care not about the long struggle to reform the party, for that is hard work. It is easier to allow Republicans to win and destroy the country so as to allow other Democrats to realize that we are in fact right and they should follow us.