What happened to the Daily Kos?
I’m a liberal. When I discovered this blog (2004) it was the most liberal site I’d ever read. Over the years, it has consistently been on the forefront of the most pressing, far left social and economic issues of our day.
In the past month, the dailykos community, by way of its endorsement of Hillary, has turned against Greenpeace. Greenpeace, people.
We have alienated Black Lives Matter.
Where we once lauded the Occupy movement, now we get equivocation: Sometimes it’s O.K. for a politician to accept large sums of money from Wall Street.
We are defending Henry Kissinger. Henry. Fucking. Kissinger.
And now it’s “safe and responsible fracking.” WTF is “safe and responsible fracking”?? That must be the kind of fracking that doesn’t use millions of gallons of water, doesn’t leave underground fissures, and doesn’t contaminate the ground water. Or as they decided in New York, maybe it’s just the kind of fracking that doesn’t happen in my backyard.
What. The. Fuck.
It seems that everything this blog once stood for is up for negotiation. We’ve hitched our wagon to the Clinton campaign, and the Clinton campaign’s positions have taken precedence.
Do you feel compromised? Taken advantage of?
The people who take advantage of our slanted playing field are not being genuine about their purpose at dailykos or their intentions about electing more and better democrats. Sure, half of them are long time community members, but the other half are here just to get Hillary elected. They don’t care about the other democrats (except for using them as a convenient talking point within the spurious claim to be supporting the down ballot races), they don’t care if they leave scorched earth behind when they’re done.
Many have taken Markos’ endorsement as a tacit endorsement of all the Clinton campaign’s positions. In for a penny, in for a pound. All through this primary season, I’ve watched this blog get overrun with zealots who will shit on the membership in order to pursue a political end. As much as he tried to put the brakes on it after the fact, the damage is done. An air of impunity has been created.
Then I saw the following quote regarding the animosity toward Hillary:
It’s the rest of us who support her who are viewing the belittlement and derision from supposed progressive sources with an increasing amount of alarm and anger.
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For a lot of people watching this Primary unfold, the attempts to undermine and delegitimize a thoroughly vetted, experienced, and popular Democratic candidate for President is impossible to not take personally.
The Clinton campaign has always known their path to victory is to disparage the Sanders supporters into apathy. In the early days of the campaign, disparaging took the form of belittling his efforts. Then it grew some teeth and evolved into ridiculing his positions. Now that it’s met its full fruition, it comes down to ridiculing his supporters.
When someone still supports Bernie’s chances around here, they can expect accusations of substance abuse, detachment from reality, and derision.
Notice the difference here. One side belittles the candidate, and the other side belittles the candidate’s supporters. And in the end it all somehow becomes personal? As if it’s congruent? Accuse Hillary of being a windsock and the personal slight towards her supporters is identical to calling me drunk and out of touch?
There is a side of politics that I detest, and you probably do too. It’s the disingenuous faux outrage spawned by hyperbolic overreaction. It’s the Rovian strategy of accusing your opponent of your own worst transgressions. It’s when the politicians lie and couch their true agenda in ambiguous happy talk that won't offend their core constituencies. It’s when, as a voter, I feel like I’m being played.
And lately, around here, I feel like I’m being played.
When the primary is over, relationships will need to be repaired. But what may be harder to repair is this site’s reputation.