So, DUers - What are we doing here in GD:P, and why are we doing it? [View all]

[Algernon Moncrieff]

My question to all of us - at this point, what are we doing?

Earlier tonight, I conducted a highly unscientific survey of DUers, and in results that should surprise no one, over 95% of us have pretty well made up our mind on who we are voting for. So whenever we post about how great Hillary or Bernie is, we are officially just preaching to our respective choirs. True-to-DU-form, we make post after post after post about: how third-way Hillary is; Hilary's IWR vote; Bernie's love of the gun lobby; I - VT or D- VT. And I'm as guilty as any of us -- my intent is not to claim to be holier-than -thou here. But we are spending much energy pointing fingers and name calling against one another while ignoring our broad areas of agreement -- about women's rights; about the need to improve the ACA/move toward single payer; about keeping the next three SCOTUS judges from being clones of Sam Alito; about sane immigration policy; about some sense of racial justice in this country.

Another poster (Cali, I think) made a post basically saying (and I'm oversimplifying and paraphrasing) Hillary and Bernie supporters aren't speaking the same language. They just aren't interested in the same things. In a broad sense, I'd agree with that. We tend (again -- making a simplistic generalization) to have differing views on what we want in a President and from the party.

There's nothing wrong with enthusiasm for a candidate. Go Bernie! Go Hillary! However, However, it's pretty clear that both sides are getting on one another's nerves. I'm not a Sanders supporter, but I imagine Bernie supporters are tired of being told their candidate's chances are slim and his supporters are delusional. I am certain that Hillary supporters are really sick of hearing that our candidate is little-better than Ted Cruz.

So, if we've all made up our minds, fine. If we're all going to gloat and vent about primary and caucus results - fine. Here's where I'm coming from: in 2008, Hillary v. Barack got pretty acrimonious; however, we all agreed that the Bush policies had to end. We all got behind President Obama, and he won. It has not been a perfect Presidency, but it's been pretty good, especially considering the congressional headwinds and the mess he inherited in January 2009. I'm probably being overly pessimistic, but I just don' see that now. I see two sides that are pretty embittered with one another.

So I have no idea how the rest off the primaries play out. Will we pretty much know by Super Tuesday? Will this go until June? Whatever it is, I'd like to ask these questions:

If we can't come together on who should be President, can we set aside our differences to get Dems elected to the House and Senate?
Can we at least try to agree that either Clinton or Sanders would be an improvement over Rubio, Cruz, or Trump?
Can we be honest enough with ourselves to admit that both of our candidates, Bernie and Hillary, have some imperfections, drawbacks, and flaws?