The time is rife with many in the media and blogosphere saying, “Thanks for your input, now shut up and get out [of the race]”. Why? To promote Democratic Party Unity. A laudable desire seeing that under the watchful eyes of DWS and the DNC, the Rpublicans have 30 governorships, at least sixty state legislatures (counting upper and lower houses). We MUST unite to preserve the party of FDR! But, wait, it’s not the party of FDR anymore. We Democrats have been leveraged rightwards, thus leaving many progressives behind.
The cry for unification by Hillaryites is understandable, since she now seems to have the nomination locked up. We need a “united” party to stave off the HATED Republicans (most like neo-Fascist Donald Trump).
So, in order to placate the disaffected left wing of the Democratic Party, one would suspect that some conciliatory behavior on the part of Team Hillary would be in order.
Examples of such “conciliatory” behavior include the following:
1. HRC stating that millennial are ignorant and haven’t done their research.
2. Paying trolls from an estimated $1,000,000 fund to trash Bernie in online and print media.
3. Claiming that Bernie “may not be a true Democrat”.
In recent weeks a Bernie-or-Bust movement has arisen, the reasons for which I will not discuss further.
1. Only 25% of the potential voters in the U.S. are self-identified Democrats
2. About the same number of potential voters are self-identified Republicans
3. One-third of all potential voters don’t give a damn about party labels and will vote for whomever appeals to them most. Again, many possible reasons for their voting behavior; but note, that independents are just that—independent. They do not comprise a monolithic voting bloc.
It should be obvious from the recital of the above stated voting positions of most of the electorate, that either major party candidate, best HRC or Trump, DESPERATELY needs to appeal to the independent bloc. However, the usual thinking is that major party voters will coalesce behind their party’s presidential nominee.
However this primary season has turned into a most unexpected direction for both major parties. Many Republicans are downright queasy about having Donald Trump represent the GOP in this year’s presidential election. But make no mistake about this, many Democrats are deeply disaffected about Hillary Clinton being the party’s presidential nominee.
Daily Kos is the leading Democratic-party oriented website, with approximately 1,300,000 subscribers. We can assume that the leadership of this web-site is far more politically educated regarding Democratic policies. Several large states have yet to vote in this primary, especially California. Hillary has for several weeks been pivoting her rhetoric against the Republicans, leaving many of her surrogates to continue Bernie bashing. True, many Bernie supporters bash Hillary just as savagely.
Therefore, it seems appropriate to gauge the sentiment of Daily Kos readership as to their voting preferences in November’s general election.