With the nominating contest at an end, I have watched this community's outreach to Clinton supporters with wry disgust. For months we have verbally abused her and her supporters without mercy. Now the contest is over, and we are reaching out to them with an outstretched hand, asking them—expecting them—to return to our side in the name of Democratic unity. We pretend our own abuses never occurred. Even in victory I see our community offer little acknowledgment of its misconduct, and no apologies.
The ugly truth is that we behaved deplorably, regardless of whatever the Clinton faction might have done. We had the opportunity to keep our heads and run a good campaign for Obama. We did no such thing. We failed our own candidate, who speaks of integrity and unity. We created permanent enmity within the progressive movement, enmity that never needed to be. So many of us, with nary a thought nor stroke of wisdom, simply brandished our traditional anti-Republican fervor, crossed out the "GOP," and put in its place "HRC." What followed was unthinking cruelty and a failure of scruples the likes of which is democracy's everlasting bane.
Worst of all, this community's lapse of ethics came with the tacit and sometimes explicit support of Kos and the other editors. We are all to blame, even people like me who tried to speak out against the insanity. Anyone still here, shares communally in our ignominious antagonism of our liberal brothers and sisters who supported Clinton.
I have to say this one thing: With the nomination settled, I sincerely hope and fully expect most Clinton supporters to discern Barack Obama's superiority to McCain and all the others running for president this year, and to vote for Obama with, if not gladness, then at least with an understanding that Obama will best represent their progressive interests.
But this place, Daily Kos, has some audacity indeed, in asking the very same people we abused and alienated to now come back to us. This audacity becomes something more than audacious, something brazen, vain, and obscene, when we offer our entreaties not with remorse and humility, but with the triumphant air of a demand. We have no right, no credibility to make such a demand.
Alegre, and anyone else who we drove away, has no reason to return here. The repressive abuses in which we engaged should not simply be forgotten by the very victims of that abuse. These people can support the Democratic Party just fine without ever gracing these orange corridors again, and I imagine that many of them will.
Those who do return here will do so for their own reasons, not because we invite them. We should make a far more meaningful gesture of goodwill by showing some genuine contrition and acknowledging the severity of our wrongs. They are Democrats too, and we could do these things on their behalf, and on behalf of our entire liberal movement.
For my part, I apologize for not having done more to try and keep the community together. I witnessed hideous injustices, and spoke few words against them. My disgust was put to little use.
I also apologize on behalf of the entire Daily Kos community, of which I am still a willing member. As a voice of the community, albeit a minor one, I cannot speak for any one individual but myself, yet I can speak for the great orange corridors themselves, because I am a part of them. I apologize that my community went astray and turned against its own people.
My sincerest hope now is that as many of us as possible will learn from our mistakes, and dispense at once with the insulting diaries entreating Clinton supporters to return, each of which reads like the two-faced lies of an abusive husband offering his battered wife flowers and promises.
Only when we show some sincerity at reunification will we be fully empowered to focus on the crucial election that lies ahead.