One isn't supposed to write "calling out" diaries, so I want to say, first off, that this one isn't. (Neither was Dana's -- the vagueness that some persons complained about is deliberate, as Dana knows that naming names would have led to heated accusations of "calling people out", and many of those would likely have been made by the same people currently accusing him of being vague. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.)
I'm responding to a portion of his diary that really resonated with me, as it fits with my own experience, back in the day, when the web was new and I used my 14.4 kbaud dial-up modem to access the Socialist Liberty listserv.
Follow me past the jump for more.
Dana's diary resonated with me, in large part, because of this:
Second, recognize that most of the doomsayers and nattering nabobs of negativity aren't all people who've "changed" or are Democrats who can't be pleased. Most of them probably aren't Democrats. Sure, most probably voted for Obama. But there are definitely some posters around here—again, a very small, albeit vocal and active group—who really hate the Democratic party. They don't want to see our party and candidates and elected officials succeed. They're more concerned with trafficking in their own poses and purity.
Oh, yeah. I recognize the type from prolonged personal experience. As I said up top, I used to hang out at the Socialist Liberty listserv, many moons ago, back in the days when 56k modems were cutting-edge technology.
This was the sort of site where Paul Wellstone and Jesse Helms were considered to be the same person. Many of the listees, even the mild-mannered David McReynolds (yes, I know he's normally thought of as fiery, but compared to the other listees he was downright polite), still bore a grudge against Joan Baez, who they claimed was a "CIA asset", for her daring to question the Vietnamese government's human rights record. (Many of the older folks among these people also were pissed at The Nation for having criticized Soviet Russia decades earlier.) It was taken as a given that Bill Clinton was Hitler and that Hillary Clinton was a "greasy-haired bitch from Hell", as one listee put it. Another one called her "The First Ho". (The extreme invective launched against her easily equaled the worst anti-Hillary crap found at Free Republic. At least this was a listserv circa 1995, so there weren't any cheesy, sleazy graphics of Hillary and Vince Foster.)
Factionalism and purity fights were the order of the day: The Socialists and Communists hated each other, and hated other Socialists and other Communists. You literally couldn't get more than three of them together without a no-holds-barred "my Marxism is purer than yours" battle breaking out. McReynolds, a respected lion of the War Resisters League, was raked over the coals for his largely symbolic runs for president -- not because they were largely symbolic, but because by doing so he acknowledged the validity of the American electoral system.
That's when I discovered the reason that, the farther left one went, the less inclined it made one to participate in electoral politics (as opposed to hard-core righties, who gladly do so in order to get what they want, and who have by and large succeeded). The truly pure Communists believe that running for office or even voting is helping to prop up a corrupt system, and the sooner it's made to crash to the ground, the better. The only time it's apparently acceptable is when you're trying to monkeywrench the system in the manner of Ralph Nader. It doesn't matter that the little people one claims to adore will be hurt far worse than the captains of industry by this; what does matter is that the Commies stand ready to leap into the void left by the destruction of the capitalist/democratic order.
Of course, this is the thinking that gave us Bush in 2000: Nader ran knowing that he would siphon off votes that would have otherwise gone to Gore, because he wanted Bush to win: "When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: 'Bush.'" ... Gore "groveled openly" to automakers, charges Nader, who concludes with the sotto voce realpolitik of a ward heeler: "If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win." Didn't exactly work out that way, did it?
This is also the sort of thinking exercised by the German Communist Party in the early 1930s, when they backed Hitler precisely because he was the worst of the available candidates. ("Nach Hitler, Uns!" was their motto.) We all know how that turned out as well.
So, yes, when I read Dana's diary, I knew whereof he spoke with regard to Daily Kos, because I had a ringside seat at a far more concentrated version of the Lefty Purity Fights back in the day, and so was educated in spotting much of the same often-juvenile rhetoric.