As some may have noticed, full-throated support for Hillary Clinton's Presidential bid is inexplicably a tad short of universal on this site. A very few chronic naysayers have been quick to point out her ties to Wall Street (all lies), her support of the Iraq catastrophe (never happened) and her seeming indifference to the needs of average working Americans (which of course, judging by her eager appearance at Netroots Nation this year, we might easily forget).
Despite--and perhaps, because of-- the unquestioning, lockstep support and complete lack of criticism of Hillary from Democratic sites such as this, the GOP is taking no chances. A Republican SuperPac, "America Rising" has been formed for the purpose of, among other things, inciting the left's progressive base against the Hillary juggernaut:
The group seems to be going out of its way to stir up trouble for Hillary within the Democrats' lefty base. America Rising has highlighted Clinton's past support for the Iraq War and called her out for continuing contracts with Blackwater when she was at the State Department. The weekend of Netroots Nation, the PAC made a video that spliced together a clip of Elizabeth Warren denouncing lobbyists with an old video of Clinton defending her decision to accept donations from lobbyists, a clear appeal to the liberals who might be wary of Clinton's campaign finance record.
America Rising,
formed by a former Romney Staffer with the aid of the RNC, has already had some measured success at negative Hillary-framing for a gullible U.S. corporate media eager to stoke the meme of "Democrats in disarray:"
The group's greatest concern trolling coup came in June, after Clinton was interviewed by NPR's Terry Gross. Before the interview had aired on most stations, America Rising had already clipped a seven-and-a-half minute segment during which Clinton grew defensive when Gross questioned her over her shifting views on same-sex marriage. Media outlets immediately picked up on America Rising's framing of the interview, including liberal media outlets that would traditionally defend Clinton against conservative attacks.
All snark aside, my point in bringing this group to everyone's attention is not to appear as an unbridled cheerleader for HRC 's candidacy, but to generally make everyone cognizant of the fact that in the coming two years there are going to be two types of Hillary critics on this site--the first are established and respected Kossacks who will point out (and rightly so) the real shortcomings of her record and the likely consequences of her election; the second, another smaller, altogether insidious cast of characters who will come right out of their comment-free, Diary-free, 1000,000-plus UID box with anti-Hillary commentary designed solely to thwart the Democratic Party by sowing discord. Depending how bright this latter group is (and I'm not convinced they are all that bright), the ability to identify them from the former is going to be difficult at times. Adding to the difficulty will be the fact that as their discourse is within the site's accepted parameters they cannot be hide-rated into oblivion like most trolls even though what they are doing is, in fact, trolling. The annoyance may be exacerbated if the site does away with its identification of User ID's, as we are now drawing a lot of anti-Democratic troll types from Facebook along with genuine new Democratic site users. And of course, there is a distinct probability that some genuine users will be misidentified as trolls by the community, leading to the usual angst and handwringing. In short, there will be a lot of healthy debate regarding the (anticipated) candidacy of HRC among this community. Determining what is debate and what is simply disguised troll behavior, however, will be a challenge.
Some bright lines are probably worth noting: Posters that encourage non-voting are not doing us as Democrats any favors. Not voting is the same as voting Republican, from a purely mathematical standpoint. For those who encourage voting for a third-party, this conflicts with the site's stated purpose and you should probably not be here at all. Likewise, posters loudly declaring they have no intention of voting out of protest or want to "sit this one out" need to evaluate why they are here in the first place. None of the above are immediate cause for accusations of trollery, but all are outside the realm of helpful discourse for this site. Posts pitting one activist Democratic group against another, or simply bad-mouthing one group in blanket fashion constantly are also unhelpful, particularly if the difference in opinion amounts to a single issue. These types of statements simply do not advance the ball for Democrats, and groups like "America Rising" know it. The more they can discourage Democrats here, the more likely their "Democrats in disarray" meme breaks into the public discourse and the more likely they can damper enthusiasm on a nationwide level. This type of tactic should be particularly obvious after HRC becomes the actual nominee, assuming she does.
Progressive Democrats may have every good reason to be disappointed or alienated by some or a lot of what they hear about Hillary Clinton. The legitimate disagreements over her perceived hawkishness and coziness with Wall Street are unfortunately the exact types of buttons this GOP organization will be pushing:
"I think that a big vulnerability for Hillary Clinton throughout her entire career is that she has come off as disingenuous, and come off as overly political, and we see our job as exposing that," Miller says. "So when she is going to either move to the left to try to appease these liberal voters who might be upset about certain things in her record, or pivot to the right to prepare for a general election, that's something we're going to talk about."
As Democrats, how we choose to act upon our disagreements will make the difference between either feeding the GOP propaganda machine or moving forward with our own ends and goals. While there are a multitude of well-informed posters on this site with widely differing views, I think we can all agree on at least one thing:
nothing good has ever come out of feeding the GOP.
Still, I don't envy the ADMINS in policing the site over the coming two years. It will be enough to send anyone's vase spinning.