Reply #30: here are the problems

[Two Americas]

First, your post could never be effective at achieving its purported aim.

"Are you out of your minds?" you ask people. Which people? What is the supposed problem that your post addresses? Even if a person had never considered not voting for the Democratic nominee, they could easily resent your attempt at enforcing loyalty. There is no mass "don't vote for the Democrats" movement going on that requires suppression, and even if there were your post would tend to increase that trend, not stop it.

Secondly, politics is a little more complicated than making a static choice, as though we were merely consumers selecting merchandise and making the "right choices." So it is not correct to set out your peculiar way of looking at politics as though it were the only possible reality. It could be argued that weak and ineffective centrist Democrats in office are worse in the long run than no Democrat in office.

Do we really imagine that the Bush administration arose in a vacuum? Years of weak and vacillating and accommodating Democratic party leadership contributed mightily to what has happened. All the time that Clinton was in the White House, the right wing was free to build and consolidate their strength - maybe more easily then they could had they held the White House. Now we have a weak and ineffective Democratic Congress that is refusing to stand up to the administration. That amounts to enabling the opposition, and may well be making things worse, not better.

Thirdly, we are now in the primary season for the party, and what is happening is a struggle for the heart and soul of the party. This is the chance - the only chance - that people have to demand a stronger Democratic party, a Democratic party that is true to its traditional principles and ideals, and enforcing loyalty tests in the middle of that suppresses those voices and short-circuits the process - the very process that may actually be more vital to the future success of the party, and that may more dramatically effect the electoral success of the party than any loyalty test could ever do.

Fourthly, your argument is dishonest, since the only reason such a loyalty test would be needed would be if we were anticipating that we will in fact wind up with a weak drifting-to-the-right nominee, and that the people on the left will then need to be bashed and ridiculed once again and driven back into the fold, or ironically told to get lost or both. But you are starting that process before we know that this will be the case. That makes your post a covert and disingenuous promotion of one faction of the party over the other, not the plea for loyalty that it pretends to be. That stuff is bad enough once there is no choice. But as of right now, we still have hope of having a voice, ad there still is a choice between the two factions within the party. You are trying to snuff that hope out. You are simultaneously telling people on the left that they aren't welcome, but that they better dare not leave. That makes the problem you are supposedly trying to solve worse, not better.

Imagine if Kucinich won the nomination. Do you think that Kucinich supporters would be screaming at Clinton supporters that they had better remain loyal? No, of course not. Why is that? Because it is not really an issue of loyalty that you are raising, it is about a battle between the left wing and the right wing of the party. The right wing has the money and the media, so they are the default winners even though they are not usually the majority among the activists, and many of us believe would not be the majority among the public were it not for their superior war chests and media access. No, if Kucinich were the nominee no one would need to be harping on the “he’s at least better than the Republicans” theme. Why? Because there would be no question in anyone’s mind that the Democratic party nominee was substantially different than the Republicans.

Calling for loyalty tests at this point is a covert and dishonest way to aid and abet one side, and to tilt the playing field in favor of one of the factions fighting for control of the party and its direction.

No doubt "any Democrat is better than a Republican." But all of us on the left have been around this block a few times, and we know what that statement really means. It means shut up and go along with the centrist right wing Dem, or go away, but if you do go away you are evil incarnate and to blame for everything that is wrong in the country, you are lucky we even tolerate you, we don't want to hear you, but you have no place else to go to suck it up you losers. Believe me, we know all of that. No need for you to rub salt in the wound. Right now is our only chance to be heard. Don't take that very brief time at the table away from us. And don't be too confident that the day is not rapidly approaching when the tables will be turned. I believe that day is coming soon.