Reply #448: Because the posts violently criticizing Kucinich were obviously done in concert.

[rudy23]

Barack Obama is the president. He's in the news every day, and he's going to get criticized, especially by members of his own party when he goes against them.

The attacks on Dennis Kucinich started in July, and there were two or three dozen posters all at the same time, using the same stick-out-on-DU-like-a-sore-thumb arguments, and over-the-top, vile language to criticize him. He's not in a high profile position, and this isn't primary season, so what could've prompted this notably bizarre behavior?

The only thing that happened at the same time that these over the top anti-DK posts started, was that he was pushing for single payer.

I think you would have to willfully ignore all qualitative evidence to discount the strong possibility that there were people on here who attacked Dennis Kucinich as part of an effort to take single payer out of the debate. If opponents of single payer could link HR676 to someone with superficial image problems like Kucinich, they could weaken our adamant stance on single payer (which they did. Like the town hall meetings, they worked).

Here are my posts from July & October when I first start to notice the phenomenon. You can tell by the words the posters use: "grandstanding", "UFO", "Naderite", "pony", "can't pull 3% nationally", etc. This, in combination with a vile tone that's meant to derail and lock pro single payer threads, makes this orchestrated effort very obvious to me, and many other posters who have noticed the same thing.

Here's the qualitative evidence. I think it's pretty damning and I encourage anyone to take an open-minded look at what I've been noting since July. Skinner, I encourage you to please take a quick look at some of these entries if you want to see specifically what we are talking about:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6022082
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6706609&mesg_id=6706670
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7356586&mesg_id=7357006
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6971489&mesg_id=6971552
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6971489&
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=433&topic_id=40119&mesg_id=40119