This is a heavily edited expansion of a long comment I made, but I think it deserves its own diary.
I just want to say something about the tone of Daily Kos. First, let me say that I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not going to beat my breast and rend my garments over our shortcomings as a community. Regrettably, there's nothing new about progressives bashing each other. It's an old problem. Older than Daily Kos. It can be over the relative priority we assign to our agenda, or it can be petty personality squabbles, or it can be substantive issues that descend into incivility. But we do have some particular history of our own.
Kossacks, to put it bluntly, are people who have had the crap kicked out of us for years. Our kind has been cruelly derided by the right wing since Reagan rode into Washington... and we've been targets of scorn and ridicule in the most slanderous ways. We've been marginalized by the media - those who aren't out and out right-wing hate-mongers themselves, people polluting the radio waves, everywhere in America, Every Single Day.
And we've been repeatedly disappointed by, if not outrightly betrayed by our representatives in Congress. We helped elect folks who then censured MoveOn.org.
It's not surprising that we're cranky.
More, of course, under the fold.
Many folks at Daily Kos have been working hard to turn things around in this country. In 2003 and 2004 we gave money, walked precincts, phone banked... stuffed envelopes... drove shut-ins to the polls. Monitored precincts. Name it... we were on the ramparts doing it. For Democratic presidential candidates seeking the nomination in 2003, for John Kerry in 2004.... for dozens of Congressional candidates.
In the aftermath of the 2004 loss, we here at Daily Kos discovered that much of the stuff that we pretty much always suspected that Bush was capable of... he had actually been doing. Total contempt of the Rule of Law. Admitted criminal disregard for Constitutionally protected civil liberties. Hell, culling the experienced and competent from the bureaucracy might have seemed like the least of it, when compared with torture, suspension of habeas corpus, wiretaps and Endless War... if it weren't for Katrina.
So we worked our butts off to bring Democrats to power in Congress in 2006 to act as a sandbag to hold off the full force of the disaster of the Bush administration. And we "won" back both houses of Congress, only to watch the Democrats fold like a house of cards again and again, over the most serious and vital of issues. And that's not just a betrayal of us, who helped elect them, but of everything this country is supposed to stand for!
And now we have another primary season, and Daily Kos has been a difficult, contentious and fractious place. Absolutely ugly. Not surprising: increasingly cynical, embittered people can be like that when their ideals have been trashed, and to all appearances, no one seems to care.
Except we hear from our candidates that they care. And some of us believe it of one or another of them, because it's all we've got to hold onto.
I'm saying that there are reasons for the hostility and anger and meanness. Not excuses. Not justifications. But reasons why this particular community, at this particular time, is latching onto different candidates to invest with hope for a future that's a far sight better than what we've been through. And that's because different people have applied different metrics to what they find important, and have reached different conclusions... and the feeling that we cannot afford to make the wrong choice isn't irrational, even if we violently disagree about what - or who - that wrong choice may be.
Yeah, people get nasty here. But it's not because they're children. It's because this country has taken a very sharp turn for the ugly in pretty much every sense. The social contract has broken down, the middle class is being worse than decimated, and so-called leaders have been winning by dividing us and stoking fear. For years.
I sympathize with the people whose sensibilities are offended by the tone around here. I admire those who hold to a higher standard. I try to obey the better angels of my own nature, and disappoint myself when I don't. It'd be wonderful if we all counted to 10 before posting, and asked ourselves if what we are about to write is a) true, b) useful and c) respectful. I don't think it's something that there's a technical solution for, and I don't think moderation can solve it without inflaming folks here with charges of "censorship' and/or bias and repression.
I don't have any doubt in my mind that there are good people here who are riding their very last nerve because they've been looking into the abyss which has been looking into them for a long, long time. And it's not pretty. And it's deadly serious stuff.
And now, a word about Hillary. If Hillary gets a extra-large portion of vitriol on this site, it may be because Progressives and the DLC have been battling for the soul of the Democratic party for years, and Daily Kos has been the chief staging area for strenuously promoting and advancing the argument against the DLC's position. Briefly, it's their premise that we need to adopt centrist or moderate positions to achieve electoral success because the country, as a whole, doesn't embrace the Democratic agenda. They feel that we need to take votes from the GOP by attracting crossover voters.
The progressive stance is that this may in the short term win particular races... but structurally it weakens us: it alienates natural constituents among labor, single-parent families, ethnic minorities, gays, the working poor, people who get left behind by these compromises. A large contingent here at Daily Kos feel that we should be looking for victories by appealing to a growing pool of potential voters who have opted out of the system, not those who participate and are more sympathetic to the right... but people who embrace our agenda but have been alienated from politics.
It's a legitimate difference in strategy and tactics, and the candidates find themselves at various positions along that axis. More to the point, different candidates are perceived differently by folks here as being at various points on that axis. And, this is important: we all see ourselves as Good, Serious Democrats who are trying to do The Best Thing for the Party.
People on either side of this argument are deeply convinced that the others are dead wrong, and they're going to screw up the party and lose the election. And that's just not acceptable.
So, that's what we're experiencing here.
A puddle of water in a desert can turn otherwise mild-mannered people vicious. And, for us, the presidency is more than a drop of water.
For my part, I'm going to support any Democrat over any of the Repubicans in the general election. And I'm still going be to fighting for the soul of the party, no matter what, because I don't believe that some magical Progressive Third Party can and will emerge. As frustrating as tiring as it is, taking back the Democratic party may be a job we need to take on for the rest of our lives. My position is that we mustn't become frustrated by any turn of events... we need to keep moving our agenda forward. And the worse things get, the more important it is to stay engaged and focused.
In conclusion, I can't say that what we see here at Daily Kos, bad as it is, is a particular indictment of our community. What we're seeing is a not-so-pretty aspect of our humanity. If we're looking for a "kinder, gentler" Democratic site, we'll probably find one in a narrow enclave of the very like-minded.
We can, and should, try to behave better, but the problems here won't be able to be solved by better technology, or by the imposition of more authoritarian moderators. It has to come from all of us trying not to foul our own nest.
For me, leaving here isn't an option. I'm fully engaged, and I"m not about to walk away from a community of passionate Democrats and Progressives because they're rowdy and sometimes obnoxious.
You are my people. At your best, you are passionate, self-sacrificing, hard working advocates for something far greater than yourselves.
And sometimes, sometimes, we're frayed and snappish and unnecessarily harsh and hostile.
I'm not here to judge us - I take us as we come. If you find a better class of humanity around the corner, please let me know... but I'm not holding my breath.