I want to make informed decisions. Who's going to do the informing?

[defacto7]

After reading an op that undermines my candidate my first reaction is a strong one. I'm disappointed and my knee-jerk reaction is to sink the ship. On the other hand there are some good rebuttals. But the good lesson for me is to think through the manipulations in the last elections.

The bots and deceivers were powerful in the time leading to those elections, this we all know; a lot of people were duped. It would be irresponsible on my part to dump any candidate on this or even a few negative tweets or bites just as much as it would be irresponsible for me to disregard them because their messages don't meet my standards for a candidate.

If you think the descievers were rampant and somewhat successful last time around I have no doubt the perpetrators have worked hard to improve since then.

I'm holding all info and judgements until I see and hear the real thing in action at the debates and in person. I'm not letting any tweets or hearsay dictate my position but I will compare notes and make my conclusions based on experience, not strictly on what I'm fed by the media or anonymous promotion.

That's how I see it.

D7

[True Dough]

1. This was the first strike against Pete

and, you're right, we don't know how legitimate it was. There is a wealth of evidence out there that Pete is an exemplary candidate. Now there's one brief quote (possibly taken out of context) that seems to indicate he was critical of some aspects of Hillary's campaign. Does that erase everything else? Not even close. Not a chance!

Any serious contender for the nomination who starts to get some traction is going to have all kinds of things thrown at them in an attempt to bring them down a rung or two.

Chin up. Carry on, defacto. Better days ahead (and some bumpy ones too, no doubt, but we'll persevere).

[defacto7]

2. Thanks True, I hope no matter what candidate people support

that verification, vetting, debates in real time and personal experience are the only real decision makers. Most other sources are questionable and some, like FB and twitter are just not to be taken seriously.

[marylandblue]

3. I don't care about any negative information about any candidate.

I don't care if they say things DU doesn't like, I don't care if one candidate attacks another, I don't care if coordinated hit jobs of any type are blasted over the media, I don't care if DU thinks they are blowing up the party, I don't care if a candidate is too young, too old, too black or too white, too gay or too straight.

I care about one thing. I imagine those same attacks coming out of Trump's mouth, loudly and repeatedly. And then I care about how the candidate responds. I want a candidate who will deflect the attack, shut it down and turn it around to make something good of it.

By this measure, Pete scores best. This attack is least likely to hurt him in the general election, least likely to be used by Trump, and Pete also has the best responses to negative information. He makes the best velvet-fisted attacks on twitter.

Myself, I try not to say bad things about Hillary or any candidate. But this really isn't about Hillary. The candidates can say whatever they want, as long as it works.