Over the nearly 15 years I've been here, I've enjoyed being part of this community. I relished the mix of encouragement and honest, pointed criticism, the varied interests of so many participants. I'm also thankful for this space. It got me writing again after many, many years of not. There are dozens of people here who've helped me both refine my thinking and improve it. I want to thank all of you, especially the folks I've sparred with for years, with good faith on both sides.
It's become increasingly clear over time that much of what drew me and kept me here doesn't exist anymore. Many of the people whose comments and writing I most enjoyed are no longer here. Most of the sharpest, most incisive writers left years ago for various reasons and won't be coming back. For years, I didn't write here because sharing the same space with people like billmon and Meteor Blades, who knew vastly more and wrote far better than I could, was intimidating. I lurked for years, visiting only occasionally.
I began to write regularly here focusing on a single issue, Palestine-Israel, and I want to especially thank the I/P folks I've interacted with for years. Many of them have left, or participate infrequently now. I have continued writing here to converse with those who've stayed and out of what now seems like a mistaken sense of loyalty.
It's now clear that this is a mistake, and somewhat counter-productive. This site's owner has never really been comfortable with left-leaning views. Moderation here has always been haphazard, and often easily gamed by camps who curry favor with moderators. Moderation on an open site is, in general a thankless task, so I have empathy for the folks tasked with dealing with the baroque characters assembled here. With Trump in the White House, the fear that many feel has created an ever more absurd environment.
Quality has suffered in lock step. Even a small UI change, moving the Community Spotlight below the rec list, I have lately found, is a jarring signal of changed priorities. I rarely got on Community Spotlight in the past few years. But I always knew that's where the actual cream of the community crop was. I also know that it did not always rise to the top of the rec list.
It's been dead easy to get to the top of the rec list in the Trump era. Take a clever tweet or a line from a speech attacking Trump and put it in the title. Or, weave a breathless tale about the imminent impeachment of Trump. For months, that sugar rush was what we craved and many of us still do. I say we because I was a participant. It was and is a comfortable story to tell ourselves. The unfortunate flip side is that all other, meaningful stories are shouted down in defense of "unity".
There is very little wrong with the Democratic party, its 2016 strategy or the trajectory it has been on for 30 years. The 2016 election was lost purely because it was stolen, by dastardly Republicans and agents of a foreign power. We must shame every person who toyed with voting for the green party and ignore the fact that 3 times as many people voted for the libertarian candidate. Good Democrats just need to fall in line and pedal faster, and every politician with a (D) behind their name is immeasurably better than any person who does not. You question this orthodoxy at your peril.
We're in a primary now. There are serious issues at stake, and serious candidates advocating for their visions of what America can be. They also have pointed criticisms of each other's strategies. Some of these criticisms are welcomed and celebrated here. Others aren't. Virtually any outlandish attack on Bernie Sanders, from claims that he is secretly racist, or seeks to appease racists, to conspiracy theories about his tax returns, to claims that he is an authoritarian, are accepted and touted here. Similar attacks are championed by the site's owner and others who manage this site.
Meanwhile, factual diaries that merely report on other candidate's campaign events and public statements are aggressively policed by moderators (influenced by systematic complaints from factions). There are too many sacred cows, and too many outcasts. And that was before the completely predictable, repeatedly prophesied and shameful events of this week.
Where, how and from whom candidates raise campaign funds is a legitimate topic of discussion. It also matters to voters, many of whom distrust politicians who seem to be too cozy with wealthy Americans. The median household in this country makes less than $60,000 a year. Nearly 1 in 5 American children live in poverty.
Think for a moment, of the optics of hosting fundraisers at a private mansion where the landscaping bill for a summer season exceeds the median household income of the US. If you think these optics don't matter, I have four bridges across the East River that I'd like to sell you.
It's not just optics. Fundraisers and who has your ear at them influences policies. Who a candidate pitches their campaign to, and the words they use to appeal to them matter. These words influence their platform, these events influence their hiring, and eventually they influence the policies they support. It's systematic, yet many in this community seem willing to pretend that it isn't. The voters we need to support us are not so naive or willfully ignorant.
It is not the "politics of destruction" or a "gratuitous attack" to point out what a candidate plainly says at campaign events, or where these campaign events are held. It is not malicious to point out a candidate is back-tracking or watering down a proposal they claimed to support. Campaign finance is one of the biggest structural factors to have influenced our politics over the past few decades.
It's a sign of enormous weakness to claim simultaneously that the venues and donors don't matter, or should even be celebrated, while condemning factual reporting on them. I suspect all of you, in your heart of hearts, know this. Heck, I don't have to suspect, most of this community seems to support Elizabeth Warren, who has eschewed such fund-raisers, precisely because she too knows the optics are terrible.
Our eventual Democratic candidate's success will actually depend on having an honest and open primary. If we hide the differences between the candidates, or seek to paper over issues and optics that send signals voters recognize, we will end up with a weak candidate and a weak general election campaign. We will not be furthering the supposed goal of this site, "more and better" Democrats.
I’m not interested in pretending the Democratic Party isn’t struggling with existential questions. I’m not interested in being willfully blind to the differences I see between various campaigns in pursuit of a false conformity. This is going to be a hard, well fought primary. It will be over very soon, sooner than most people think. The calendar is front-loaded in ways it was not in 2016. By the third Tuesday in March, over 65% of all pledged delegates will have been determined. In contrast, that threshold was not reached till late April in 2016. California's 416 pledged delegates will be allocated on 3/3/2020. The early calendar and its composition will influence who is chosen as the candidate. Given the large, well funded field, the 15% threshold will make a huge difference in delegate apportionment. Candidates who have high floors of support will walk away with proportionally more delegates. Democratic primary voters are more persuadable and better informed than in earlier cycles, people know what is at stake. Those who insist they know with certainty what set the winner will come from are being silly.
The time to discuss candidates, freely and openly, is now. And yet, since I now believe the best conversations cannot be had at DK, and that my active participation doesn’t nurture them here, it is time to stop writing.
All that said, it’s been a pleasure writing for and reading many of you here for so many years, and as I go back to lurking, I'll continue reading what many of you write. We remain friends, and I trust allies for most causes. I wish you good fortune in the primaries to come.
In solidarity,
@subirgrewal
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PS. For those of you who've enjoyed my writing, I would like to recommend a handful of podcasts I listen to regularly:
- Chris Hayes - Why is this Happening?
- Democracy Now! - The War and Peace report
- Hear the Bern
- Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill
- Current Affairs
- Chapo Trap House