Whether you supported Hillary or Bernie in the primary, we are all Democrats because we care deeply about our country and our fellow human beings. Right now, all of our hearts are breaking. If you are a Bernie supporter, please try to keep a see-I-told-you-so tone out of your diaries and comments. If you're a Hillary supporter and you want to say, sore loser, sour grapes...please don't. Since the election, I've been disturbed by what I've seen in the comment threads. As Democrats, shouldn't we be disinclined toward cruelty?
My last diary and comments on DailyKos were posted in April and May. I was deeply involved during the primary as a volunteer for Bernie. And like many Bernie supporters, I felt driven away from DailyKos by Kos's March 15th edict that thou shalt not speak ill of Hillary until after the general election. That autocratic act of censorship, combined with the level of vitriol on DailyKos, drove me away.
In truth, I would like to stay away not only from DailyKos, but also from all political blogs, web sites, newspapers, magazines, news shows, and politics altogether. But I can't. There is too much at stake.
My husband has insulin-dependent diabetes. Although the ACA is deeply flawed, we need it. But there is more than that. When I hear that Americans who are black, Hispanic, or Muslim feel a deepened sense of fear about walking down the street, it turns something inside of me. When I hear that calls from LGBQT youth are flooding suicide hotlines, I feel - at a loss for words. What do you say to someone who has reached that depth of despair because he feels, she feels, that she is now an object of hatred?
A smaller, but more focused, question also arises. What do we members of DailyKos now say to each other? Whether you supported Hillary or Bernie during the primary, we are all Democrats. Our political activism is driven by a deep sense of fairness, concern, and a desire to see our fellow human beings treated with respect.
And, right now, our hearts are breaking.
Some of us were working - hair on fire - during the primaries, because we believed that Bernie was our best bet to stop the Trump train. Now I feel that way more than ever. But I take no pleasure in it. There are times in life when it feels good to say, see I told you so. This is not one of those times.
The hard, cold truth is that 60 million Americans saw the same Trump that you and I did night after night on the news. They witnessed Trump's ridicule of a disabled reporter, his incitements to violence at his rallies, his expressions of contempt toward women, Muslims, and African-Americans. And 60 million of our fellow Americans were not repelled by this. They voted for Trump anyway.
I am appalled by this. I would like to say I'm surprised. But I'm not. I grew up in Waukesha county in Wisconsin. I felt certain that Waukesha county would vote for Trump by a large margin. America is a patchwork quilt of Waukesha counties stitched together. My awareness of this drove me during the primaries.
In November, I voted for Clinton. I reversed myself on this. By the middle of the primary season, I was so turned off by the unfairness of the process, that I resolved to write Bernie in. I changed my mind as the months wore on. I realized that there was too much at stake in this election. The cold hand of fear propelled me into the voting booth.
In an interview prior to the election, Bernie said, "I don't know what America would look like after four years of a Trump presidency." None of us knows. We do know that as activists and people who care, we have to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
Part of that work includes studying the election - mistakes by Democrats, the potential for a different outcome if Bernie had been the candidate. Even though there is no way to know for certain, we are looking at hypotheticals, we still need to do this work. And there is no room in this discussion for a tone of see I told you so, or your fault... This examination needs to have a cold, hard, political science aspect of it.
Right now, I would love to grab a megaphone, climb up to the top of a mountain and scream at those 60 million Trump voters: Have you no decency?
But if we each indulged in unfettered outpourings of rage, I have an inkling of what that America would look like. I've seen enough of Trump rallies to know that, and that America is a place I do not want to go.
The kind of work we need to do involves talking to and listening to people with whom we disagree. Of those 60 million Trump voters, some of them embraced the hate. And I am not naive enough to believe we can talk to them.
But there were over 100 million Americans eligible to vote who didn't bother. We need to start talking to and listening to them. But first, we here on DailyKos need to talk to and listen to each other.
