General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It would be nice if the centrists in this party did some introspection, too. [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)-I'd never call you a centrist, just a person who prefers different tactics but whose passion and commitment to change I nonetheless respect-but as people who make a habit of self-righteously demonizing everyone to the left of their personal comfort zone.
The ones who equate ANY critique of how our fall campaign was run(and attacked any calls for that campaign to try different tactics as our lead in the polls eroded)as disloyalty to the party or "refighting the primaries".
The ones who insist that we can't discuss changing anything at all, and seem to believe that we have to run the 2020 fall campaign exactly as we ran this one.
The ones whose response is simply to shout down discussion and try to silence any critique, even though discussion and critique are what we most desperately need.
The ones who still perpetuate the myth that there's a chasm between those who prioritize "social justice" and those who prioritize "economic justice", even though in truth the two movements agree 95% of the time and are often made up of the SAME PEOPLE.
And the ones who use loaded terms like "takeover" to describe what are nothing more than honorable attempts to win the party to ideas it currently doesn't support-ideas that would not require the party to betray or abandon anyone.
I don't see YOU as one of those people...and mainly, I'd like to get to the place where you could trust my intent enough to not get all "oh no you don't!" in response to almost everything I post.
I'm fine with people disagreeing with me...I'm NOT fine with anyone trying to keep us divided based on our choices in the presidential primaries and on those who are simply trying to silence honest conversations about our future. If you disagree with someone's views here, make a case for YOUR views...don't just try to shut people up. So long as the person wasn't trying to persuade DU'ers to vote for Stein or Hair Fuhrer OR personally attacking our nominee, that person didn't deserve to be shouted down or banned.
You're right there were some critical posts in the fall, but people were vilified or threatened with banning for making them, even when the criticisms or suggestions were in the mildest, most respectful and constructive form possible. What good did it do to use those tactics against people who didn't agree with every single thing that was being said and done?
I'm for people having the right to constructively disagree and to offer suggestions made in the spirit of trying to help get our candidates elected. And I've defended people's right to do that if the primaries had gone the other way.