http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... First, I would like to apologize for selfishly, recklessly, presumptively, disrespectfully, and chauvinistically using a personal speculation about how you moderate and police the board as a weapon in a personal fight that I had with another member, and exploiting a conversation from Ask The Administrators by bringing it to a place elsewhere on the board, again as a weapon in a personal fight. I can't say much more than that it was wrong, and I would think it extremely rude for someone to do that same thing to me, especially behind my back as I had done it, and in a petty and immature way for no good reason other than a defense of ego in the heat of battle. There's no excuse for doing that, and I won't make any.
I was upset by the first thread, though, where people were registering their intentions to not support Democrats due to an ultimatum. It's pretty obvious that this strategy - which I've been referring to as "splinterism" - is something of a bugbear of mine, as I see it as a preventable factor leading to the Bush* presidency (I still lay the "blame", as people commonly use the term, on the usual suspects that ran Florida's election, and the squad of - I feel - nearly if not fully treasonous disruptors to the recount and their organizers, as well as the Bush* campaign itself for creating an atmosphere of lies surrounding the recount. I have been fighting it for about seven years now.
I think that the reason that a certain contingent of people who participate on liberal Internet activist message boards skip the traditional political process - that is, doing the work of gaining public consensus to elect primary candidates that support one's favorite issues, that can then go on to win general elections with wide support - is that it's just so easy to give the appearance of mutiny and try to make our elected Democrats nervous. It takes little effort, and you do not even have to leave your house. I think there's an impression that it's a more powerful form of activism, given that one's voice is amplified all around the nation, but I'd debate that. Another reason is that there is little to no social consequence for doing so. You don't really have to deal with many effects of alienating other people who feel that they are better served by Democrats in office when few people even know your real name. It becomes a game that is seem to have few negative effects.
As you can see, I started a poll that tried to bring one of the issues that I felt was being disregarded by the ultimatum on Social Security into focus. Essentially, I was letting people say explicitly what they were implying in the other thread - that even if a stalemate regarding Social Security exists between the Democratic and Republican candidates of the next election, that it would be worth it to alienate other parts of the Democratic base in order to deliver this ultimatum now. I don't agree with that position, and I voted for the second choice in the poll, that I still intended to support the Democrats. There are several issues that the Democrats now support which I feel are beneficial and make it worth voting for them, and I understand that my responsibility as a partisan is to gain consensus for the other ones if they are important enough for me. In the meantime, I gain allies within the party by supporting them, even if their issues do not affect me directly.
I can see where this is considered disruptive, to post such a poll, but I feel that I was disrupting a reckless disregard for every issue other than Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. No, I don't want to see these programs tampered with. But for as long as the Republicans are actually taking a still-worse position on them, and a worse position on other issues, it's disrespectful to other Democrats who care about other issues to let the Republicans win. I wanted to expose and make it explicit that they were doing that. I also wanted to sidestep the common retorts to calls for partisan solidarity ("you put party over principle", "there is no important difference between the parties") by putting people in a situation where they would see that they are responsible for their actions, and what the consequences of their decision would be. I would hope that that would be upsetting; I was certainly upset by what people were doing in the first thread. I'm sure that a lot of people who are being helped by the Democrats would be upset to see them yanked out of office due to an ultimatum.
I'm having a lot of trouble understanding why the first thread was allowed to continue the way it did, for as long as it did, when I know that you also have strong feelings about people withdrawing support for the Democrats as a political tactic, and convincing other people to do it too. Your feelings are not as obsessive and maniacal as my feelings, but I see that you've encoded them in the DU rules, and I'm in agreement with the idea that there should be a place on the web for Democrats. If the rule wasn't there, I could also understand that, and might try to make a case for party solidarity, but it is there, and yet people are still allowed to register their intention that they will not be voting Democratic under certain conditions. But the rule is there, and when I saw that it wasn't being enforced (or enforced in a way that I do not understand), I fought back. But I don't feel that I was revealing anything that people were not first revealing in the first thread, and I was not trying to do it to alienate people, because I felt that people were being alienated already by the first tread, and I was pointing out one way in which that was happening. Please forgive me if anything comes out incoherent because I'm starting to fall asleep at the keyboard. I might have even typed some things I didn't intend to about unrelated things, but I'm to tired to go back and read.
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