I had a strange experience on Daily Kos today. I’ve been posting pro—vote-Clinton comments on the Sanders groups I signed up with during the primary. Over there I don’t get treated badly for doing so, a lot of likes as well as some green party counter-comments, but no shit. Yesterday a pro—vote-Clinton post got really positive response from Sanders supporters, so I blogged it here.
Today I got a message that it was flagged. It was full of comments by people who had only skimmed it for party-line agreement, and gotten offended without really reading it. The parts that party-line commenters complained about, that’s what sucked in people coming from the other direction — Sanders’ supporters trying to decide whether to vote for Clinton read it for real, felt like I heard where they were coming from, and were able to see reasons why they should like an article that was calling on them to vote for Clinton.
If you’ve been able to convince every Sanders supporter you meet to let go and vote Clinton, good for you. If you haven’t found yourself successful at convincing people who are pissed about the primary to vote for Clinton, I have, and y’all just shot me down. I’m not likely to stick around Daily Kos if I get swatted down instead of real conversations.
I would love to see this community add a theme on learning to communicate, not just try to force everyone on “our side” to rally and, frankly, bully those who don’t [yeah, weak bullying by modern standards, but no one engaged me or my opinions, just shut them down and flagged me]. We’d be winning a lot more elections if our movement lived it’s claimed values, active listening and nonviolent communication are techniques that would win votes.