Which candidate's supporters are monolithic?

I ask that in all seriousness.

My answer would be "No candidate's supporters are monolithic."  But you wouldn't know it by some of the posts on here this morning.

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To illustrate, I provide this exchange I had with a gilas girl this morning on one of sane democrat's diary entries.

gilas girl writes that Daily Kos is and has been Dean-centric to the point of obsession.  I would not argue with that supposition one bit.  It has been.  But then she opens her next paragraph with this line:

Dean supporters seem completely blind to this phenomenon and entries like this, I suspect, are devised to open up that blindspot.

My reply follows:

Take that first, bolded portion of your statement, gilas girl.  You and a few others on here continue to imply/insist that "Dean supporters" are some sort of monolith... that those supporting Dean move as one and think as one.  In your post and in others here, anyone who supports Dean is lumped into a single basket, for the convenience of your argument.

I will note that there are at least four diary entries on the board this morning defending Kerry from folks who, by their post histories, are Dean supporters.

So your overgeneralizations don't hold water.

Pick out posts, posters, diaries, etc, but please spare us the stereotyping and bigotry associated with lumping all of any type of person into one basket.

I doubt you would do te same thing with African-Americans or gays or Irish-Americans or Wesley Clark supporters or any other subset of the general population.

It's just as wrong in this instance.

And that is my point.  No supporters of any candidate are monolithic (save, perhaps, those backing Lyndon LaRouche). Yes, there have been more supporters of Howard Dean on this blog than supporters of other candidates.  That's what count for the Dean-centric nature of the blog.  There are just flat out more people here in his camp.

That said, it may also be true that many of those supporters may be relatively new to politics.  Thus, there may be some who are less "politically practical" (i.e. would vote for any Dem over Bush, no matter what) for various reasons... maybe they're not Democrats and they could care less about the Party, or maybe they just loved Dean so if they don't have Dean to vote for, they won't vote at all... I don't know.

But to suggest or imply that "Dean supporters" are guilty of some sort of "groupthink" is insulting to the many, many Dean supporters (such as myself) who are lifelong, active Democrats who will gladly vote for Kerry over Bush.

So just knock off the generalizations if you would.

Thanks.