Clark supporters, Dean supporters, Kerry supporters,

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Fri Jan-30-04 12:34 PM
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Clark supporters, Dean supporters, Kerry supporters,

can we please stop trying to support our candidates by tearing the others down? I refer both to the general practice of starting threads to slam a candidate with some smear or other (especially tired memes like the IWR vote, Clark's born-again Democrat status, and all the angy-man stuff about Dean), and the specific practice of defending a candidate from a smear by smearing another candidate ("Kerry's a corporate guy? Well, how about Dean's corporate connections?").

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's primary season, attacks are to be expected, candidates are going to have to be ready to take on the Rove machine, etc. etc. yadda yadda blah blah blah. But you can support your candidate without attacking and smearing the others. And we are sufficiently grown up around here to know the difference between a legitimate concern and an attack or smear. Quick clue: if your question is legitimate and not a smear, there ought to be such a thing as an answer that will satisfy you. Also, if your concern is legitimate, it should not be necessary to bring it up more than once per week.

Can we not see the harm it does to take the meat-axe to our own candidates? One of them is going to be the nominee and will require all our support in the general election. This is going to be one hell of a battle, with the media, the Rove propaganda machine, the money, and the various opportunities for election manipulation and fraud arrayed against us. We are going to need everyone on board, not just "holding their nose" but actively supporting the nominee, giving money, ringing doorbells, getting out the vote.

Are you annoyed with those who squall about "my candidate or nobody, my candidate or I'm voting Green"? Every time we start a thread smearing a candidate, we create more of those people! What propogates that attitude more than anything else is anger at the way their favored candidate is being treated, here on DU as well as elsewhere. Didn't anybody notice how NBD was basically born after all the snarky threads about Dean's Iowa speech?

And I'm willing to believe that the attackers and smearers make up a minority on DU and in GD2004. But why are threads like that greeted with enthusiastic support and angry "Yeah, well what about your guy?" posts? Why is there so little posting to the effect that we need to cut the attacks and stay positive? Does it have anything to do with Burke's commonplace about evil triumphing because good people do nothing?

We need to keep our eyes on the prize - getting Bush-the-unelected out of the White House. That means we need to be looking ahead to rallying around our standard-bearer, whoever it turns out to be (and I am not advocating that we all rally around this or that candidate now, it's too early for that). The way to prepare our nominee to pick up the banner and march into battle is not to strip the skin off him and kick him in the crotch a couple hundred times.