Trolls are an unpleasant fact of life in the blogosphere, however, learn to live with them much as we do the pests in the real world, mosquitoes, athlete’s foot, and unscooped dog deposits. So why the title? Well, it seems that posters to progressive blogs who would normally be joining the rest of us in ignoring or baiting the trolls have decided instead to become one—though they don't realize it.
In this new breed of troll there are pro- and anti- Clinton trolls, pro- and anti- Obama trolls and my favorite, the sour-grapes, non-of-the-above trolls. Until my second choice dropped out of the race, I was either a racist or a sexist or otherwise deficient for not supporting the one-true-choice; if these folks woke up one morning and found themselves GOPers—is GOPerdom a choice or an affliction?—they would probably be part of the Shrub’s 24% and actively participating in his slime-machine. And then there's the none-of-the-above crowd.
The sour-grapes crowd like to gripe about the less than ideal choices we have—they see the glass as half empty. The nomination process is horribly flawed, but at this point we have to go to the polls with the election process we have, not the one we might want or wish to have at a later time.
All these trolls-by-accident need to get a grip on themselves. If they would take a few deep breaths and step back to think a moment before posting they would see that they taking their words right out of the nasty place where Karl Rove keeps his head—maybe that explains the pasty complexion?. Do you really think by spewing bile and ad hominem attacks on other posters that your are somehow helping your cause? And for the none-of-the-abovers who are somehow shocked that things don’t work as well as they should and the candidates don’t live up to their standards remeber this: we cannot afford another GOP president who will add one or more Scalito/Thomas/Roberts/Alito clones to the court.
Winning in November is likely but it is not enough! We need to deal the GOP a crushing defeat, not only in the Presidential race but in the Senate and House races; if we don’t have solid, DINO-resistant majorities in both houses, no one’s candidate is going to be able to even start setting things right. If we chase away fellow progressives we will end up with a new president bogged down not only in the hideous messes left behind by the Shrub, but also mired in the obstructionist swamp the GOPers and their fellow-travelers made and inhabit. This observation should be obvious but it appears that this is not so.
So think before you post. By all means criticize, contrast, argue but always remember that the candidate you slime, the opponent you insult, the progressive you discourage will all be very important in November and you don’t want to have offered a helping hand to the GOP!