GOS could get a lot worse very soon
I'm a Bernie supporter, but I'm also a realist. While I don't understand how someone could vote for Hillary over Bernie, I also recognize that a lot of people are doing just that.
Bernie's path to the Democratic nomination is difficult, but not impossible at this point. However, if these three upcoming primaries go the way the polls are showing (New York, Maryland, and Pennsylvania), then any realistic chances that Bernie has are over.
Before you respond, I realize that the polls have consistently understated Bernie's support. Time after time, Bernie has outperformed expectations.
But I also know that outside of Michigan, Bernie has rarely overcome the kind of deficits he now has in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Even winning in New York would require a major surprise.
That being said, I was thinking about what it would do to the GOS.
First of all, a lot of Bernie supporters will become disheartened and disconnect, both here at C99P and TOP.
If you had looked at yesterday's Straw Poll at TOP, you would have seen that Hillary supporters had almost caught up to Bernie supporters for the first time.
Since this was the only Straw Poll since March 15th, you can probably see why.
So you can expect diaries that are content-less, tongue-kisses from Hillary supporters to dominate the rec list and FP of TOP. That'll be annoying, but not the worst part.
The worst part is that intolerance for anything anti-Hillary will increase many fold.
Think about it. Up until now it was a case of rallying around the party leader. Markos obviously made the "general election mode" call waaayyyy too early, and thus put his thumb on the scale.
But if Hillary takes NY, Pennsylvania and Maryland, then it really will be general election mode.
That means that instead of dissenters being Bernie fans, they will be suspected Trump fans/trolls.
If you think there is intolerance of progressives on TOP now, think about how intolerant things will get for suspected fans of a racist, misogynistic, fascist.
You ain't seen nothing yet. Even facts and NY Times headlines that don't praise Hillary will be suspect.
We might even see some Hillary trolls on C99P.
An even bigger problem is that this won't stop. Assuming that Hillary wins the general election (I don't think Trump or Cruz can win), she won't have any coat-tails. Congress will still be Republican. Right-wingers and independents will still hate her from Day 1.
She'll be under siege, and for the GOS that means more of "rally 'round the party leader".
Remember how when Obama won in 2008, there was a "shut up progressives and fall into line" undercurrent almost immediately, and that was with a huge Democratic majority in Congress.
How many loyalty tests will there be now?
My point is that unless Bernie can pull off a miracle comeback (and I'm crossing my fingers) TOP is going to be awful for a very long time.
Comments
future diary titles
"why 29% of the population is great!" (re: registered Democrats)
"I used to like Bernie but now he's icky"
"I used to like Bernie but now I'm voting for Hitler"
"Her Ladyship's outfits are perfect because she's perfect"
"I'm so inspired by Secretary's unparalleled lying!"
No, not there....I figure these will be good diaries here. I'll start with the top one, get that up for tomorrow morning.
I've been thinking about TOP and leaving for a good while.
The problem for me and I think for some other members, in no particular order:
Community...some of the nicest people have been there e.g. Pootie People; the Quilt sisters (I have one); Eco diaries and the twice weekly summary by MB; good platform to work on writing and illustrating a long piece of thought; Backyard Science and the Daily Bucket; Fish Out of Water, Pakolo, Overnight News Digest and other science tags (which I prefer to Groups); Fukushima and BP Oil spill teams who kept at it day and night; Election news, Finance news; Give Up Smoking, Garden Blogging, House remodeling, for awhile there was poetry; I know I'm leaving out a lot of groups which have formed: some have endured, others have faded away or the leader was finished carrying the burden.
During an earlier purge people like Nurse Kelly went to Motley Moose. It seems to me, that quite a few of the really nice people are there quietly waiting to see where they can find the support, and kinship they had in the DK sphere.
The latest and worst round of things has blown a lot of this up for sweet people who can't figure out where to go. They want their friends and the ability to stick their toes in the big pool once in awhile, but go back to safety if it gets rough. Now, well it's gotten really hard to know what they should do.
Personally, getting up and leaving totally for me, is not easy. I have people I support in their real lives and in their blog lives over at TOP. When I see they have a new home, I can let go completely too.
There is a lot to like and love here: nice people. ability to bring up topics forbidden at TOP without the ridicule. You know we should not quit questioning political, science, education, cultural, religious thought, if we have a serious sense of not having all the answers.
The formatting and ability to use HTML is cool. The Evening Blues and News, Open threads work really well.
This is a great place to write long and thoughtful, or fun and funny pieces. Articles like the Atlantic or Harpers to fairly quick hits.
Music. Bar none, the best to read by.
I really like the anonymous rating system: it is hands down the best approach I have seen.
Our hosts have been most gracious in letting us come in and put our stuff all over the place: they have welcomed us and made us feel at home.
This is just stuff spilling out I've been mulling around for the last couple of weeks, which needed a place to sit. I didn't want to have another "let's talk about TOP article" so this thread will do.
I hope this is making some sense. There is what we used to call a sunk investment. We have put time and heart into a place that has turned toxic. Like a relationship or town gone bad. But friends and family are still there. It's not easy to just walk away. And in some cases really let a team down.
Thanks again for letting us sort through our garbage and grieving in your living room. We'll clean up.
And if anybody here has any thoughts about our pals left behind, I for one am ready for suggestions.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce
If you can donate, please! POP Money is available for bank-to-bank transfers. Email JtC to make a monthly donation.
thank you, you said it so well, I agree
very much with what you said. Nice to know where Nurse Kelley went. I always wondered about her and what really happened. There are so many gone and I didn't catch what happened to them. It's sad. You mentioned so many groups I remember having passed through as a reader that were all giving us a feeling of being in a group of friendly people with great humor. There was so much good writing over there.
I am really honest and open now with my comment. I think crucial for all those good old friends you had mentioned to decide to possibly come over here, is the way Meteor Blades will decide. So far he has been very silent and stern and does his work over there in his usual excellent ways. It's a pity he can't get over himself to accept the more free and critical and may be in his opinion ridiculous "hippy or pitchfork revolutionary talk" (please that is my feeling of how he might think, I have no obvious proof or link to support that claim, so kill me for spreading something mean or wrong with my loose lips. It's not meant that way and I say that with the good intention to potentially encourage him and those loyal to him to have a peak in here). I also don't know how many here got to feel his "stern judgments and felt badly hurt in the past. You know the history, I don't. So, now forget about this and JtC can slap me on my wrist or BAN me. I am always too stupid to see what's behind the curtains.
But I think for many he is a leading writer at TOP to which many people are attached and loyal to. They have their friends around the West Coast circles and they really don't want to lose those.
The same way some don't want to lose their dogs. Harry is a beautiful dog, so proudly running with the tail all up in the air. I love that.
The Founders of this site were thinking about you for years.
It is my understanding that they foresaw a time when folks with traditional Democratic values (sharing and caring and solidarity) would be ejected from where they were gathered. The Founders' fears were that you would all be scattered to the four winds.
So, one of the purposes of c99 was to be a crossroads where you could meet up, and a place you could safely be while finding others in your circle. Some will get their bearings and move onto different blogs or join with different activist groups or causes. c99 will remain in place and always welcome folks passing through.
As for your pals left behind, or other Democrats eventually ejected by the Third Way Neoliberal Conservatives, they will eventually find their way here and you can leave messages on your profile page about your comings and goings.
Meanwhile, c99 is a unique community building out to meet members needs or desires for all sorts of activities and coalitions. It is not necessarily a political website. The social values are traditional and members are encouraged to be themselves authentically. Kindness and helpfulness seems to be the default around here. Plus, all members get 40 acres and a mule. The construction materials are your imagination.
(At least, that's the narrative that plays through my head.)
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
redacted
redacted
Exactly...
thank you P.
And thank you JtC....
Pluto gave word to what is being created here and expressed what I feel and need to remember.
Yes. And I love that cameo image
of a swimmer in the water reaching for c99p flotsam. A new safe spot, it's working out well for me so far. My horizons have been expanded.
I wrote OT in one group of friends at MOT, that I felt like it was the end of summer camp and wanted to be able to find them all elsewhere. Some are here, some I can link to. Makes the break after 12 years less painful. I am also a quilt recipient, so am glad that the Sisters got here, too.
Peace on. I vote Tuesday, and phonebank or something on Sunday.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Pluto, I’ve always appreciated the effort
you made to instil the social values you aspire to wherever you are. Fortunately they’re highly appreciated here. Thank you and Johnny and joe, and all the regulars here for making it possible for those ideals to be realised.
That's really beautiful, Pluto.
Like the catcher in the rye.
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
TOP
The only reason I still go over is The BNR, and writers like MB, Bobswern and ecology writers like Fish Out Of Water. LieparD has a separate BNR blog which I bookmarked. I read, T and R it everyday. The great writers I encountered back when I joined in 2008 have mostly moved on. TOP's quality has seriously deteriorated. There are plenty of good sites around to take its place.
gjohnsit, why the blues over NY, PA and MD? I know you're being realistic, but a little bit of optimism wouldn't hurt.
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Are you a Game of Thrones fan?
If you are you will know that the more moral and respectable of character, the more likely that character will die a horrible death.
Unfortunately, GoT is a lot like real life politics.
If Sanders actually could get the nomination, I think he would get a bullet for his efforts.
Sorry, but that's what I think.
others have thought that and even said that
it was also said about Obama, if I recall it correctly.
To which I say, that's something Sanders knows and apparently doesn't give a damn about. This sort of thinking about someone getting assassinated, because he is a dangerously moral and respectable character for the other power addictive crooks running, is in a way also a manipulation of voters emotions. Nobody forced Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or Obama to run for Presidency. If they decided to do so, they know what they are getting into. We don't have to use pre-emptively the fact that someone could get assassinated as a tool in campaigning. Even if a lot of people fear something like it.
My mom used to call it
Borrowing Trouble. That's where you fall all over yourself to worry about what might happen, whenever that happening would be something you have zero control over anyway.
I'm far from perfect in that regard, I often can be found Borrowing Trouble in other facets of my life--but for some reason, that notion made our current American politics easier for me to bear. A little bit, anyway. But if you're thinking like that--"Why bother, because they're gonna bump him off anyway?", and that's the overriding thought, you're going to lose your fight for good, and that doesn't help anybody, especially you!
I just can't give up or succumb to my inner demons that talk me out of trying whatever to fight this crap. You know the refrain just like I do--in your head, as in mine, it's always some variation of "It's all bigger than me, I'm just one person, what's the use?" There are so many days lately where I wish I could just shut this part of my brain off--the part that worries about my national identity and the politics that goes with it. Some people never question any of it, they just go blithely about their lives, in their own little orbit and never give it a second thought. But I can't shut it off--and I can't give up on it either. I don't know exactly why that is, though, and I'd love to figure it out!
I hear you, I think in same patterns,
your mom's saying is nice, I will steal it for future use.
I would love to shut down my recurring thought in my mind, when I am confronted to actually do some canvassing or phone banking. I immediately shake my head (inside my mind) and ask "How the hell is it possible that one has to knock at doors and talk to people to convince them to vote for some candidate." It's very hard for me to not get angry over the fact that it is necessary. It's foreign to me. I would hate to answer the door and have to talk with people about who I am supposed to vote for. Most canvassers are so careful to not be overbearing that they basically almost never get into a conversation the first place and they just drop a flier. But sometimes it happens and then it's satisfying. Just happens very rarely.
Sigh. I hope there will be one day an electoral system in the US that is the same in each state. If people had an independent ID card for their whole life other than SS card or DL it would make the whole process of identifying yourself in any sort of activity much more accurate and safer and easier.
In Germany the equivalent to the US SS number nobody knows but your employer's accountants, who prepare your paychecks. You have a driver's license, which is also not used as an identification. You have a "Personalausweis", which could be translated with "Personal Identity Card". That's the one that is used for any kind of identification. It's through that card that ballots are sent out to the voters, as it is also necessary to register with the authorities where you live. Americans have a strong sentiment against that, but I see, watching what is happening in this country, more advantages than disadvantages in this system. I think it's our past Nazi regime that caused the scepticism in non-Germans against general ID cards together with registration of where you live. I understand it but I also understand that lacking such a system causes a lot of inequalities.
Early voting
The next several state primaries, including New York , New Jersey, Kentucky, Delaware, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Oregon, have restricted or no early voting. So there will be long lines and long waits to vote [if we can get a large turnout]. Hillary supporters don't like to wait in long lines but Bernie supporters will do it if they have to. Some of the Hillary supporters will just give up and not vote.
I think that one fact could impact the overall voting counts.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
restricted or no early voting
That also helps a lot in that Bernie's support has been steadily increasing, so early voting in this case favors Hillary. Didn't they say that in AZ, Bernie actually tied or even won the walk-in vote, but that Hillary's lead in the early votes was too large to overcome? Someone who has already voted early cannot change their vote even if they change their mind.
One last thought: after the election we have a lot of work to do
and we will need community, support, a place to test ideas. A launch pad for taking ideas into real life. In the end what we do is what will matter: Climate Change, politics, health care, education, family. Public and personal.
This place feels like it has the legs to be where we can continue after the primaries. And we will need to make a few commitments to give it that lived in feel, continuity, history, crowd-sourced wisdom and trust.
We cannot be fooled again into choosing a standard-bearer and assuming that is all we need do. We all in our own way must contribute to the commonwealth.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce
If you can donate, please! POP Money is available for bank-to-bank transfers. Email JtC to make a monthly donation.
Hard to imagine it getting worse.
Haven't been there for a month. The Great Orange Hillary is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Should Her Imperial Majesty be elected, the site will be completely pointless.
Just a written version of Blackwaterdog's photo hagiography of Obama.
Time to move on and think of other things.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
The people I cared about at TOP
are here now. I only go there for Liepar and the BNR and two more times a day to check the rec list for an OPOL diary or from one of the people here. I've been abused. I no longer want to be abused and those folks that are left are abusive.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
I understand your feeling.
I left Balloon Juice because I was tired of being abused.
If Hillary supporters are so sure their candidate will win, why are they so mean?
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
I still read there
but rarely the front page (I'll read Kerry Eleveld because she covers LGBT issues that don't involve the actual election) and stay out of pro-Hillary diaries. I mostly skim the recent list for diaries that have nothing to do with the election. And I haven't commented or rec'd a diary or comment since I took my TTFN on March 4. Sticking to it for now; I'll probably wander back during the convention. I'll still be doing much of my participation here -- I see this site as a good place for intelligent opposition to Presidential/Congressional fuckery, whether that fuckery be from the Repubs or the Dems. We have to be willing to call out our own when they screw up -- I think that's where things started to go South when anyone who dared to question Obama's actions or non-actions were accused of being racists or Republican plants.
I posted the first diary on the link between bee colony
collapse and neonics in pesticides about 5 years ago. And a counter-diary by a scientist went up immediately. Although I had the support of the bee keepers, there were many many commenters in support of the scientist who was defending pesticides. It has since been proven that there IS a connection.
That's when I realized that the site was becoming corporate - defending the chemical corporations against the bee keepers.
To thine own self be true.
There is a small set
of Dkos users who may or may not possess science degrees but they are every bit as fundamentalist as their religious counterparts on the Right. They are not good scientists because they have no idea how to say 'I don't know'.
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” -Voltaire
Marilyn, if I remember that diary, you were spot on.
Neonics have been banned in parts of Europe now going on three years. In France the bees have rebounded rather spectacularly. The diversity in bees is an absolute wonder.
I remember as a youngster the sound and hum of bees and wasps, native pollinators in the PNW. Our yard now, is largely silent. Surrounded by big Ag which uses biocides a lot. It is dangerous not only to bees but to the humans who breathe it, get it through their skin, in food (which is not tested for metabolites of glyphosphates), water and so on.
As the world goes silent, I feel for our kids or theirs, who have not seen or heard the great diversity we had the privilege to observe and move among. It was slow and imperceptible, so even we didn't know the abundance was leaving until....almost nothing.
AS for the flamers, I remember Mem. She was on my watch out list for a long time. I would check recent comments to see what she had been up to. No good, that one.
Biocides are a real and present danger. Please write more if you are inclined.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce
If you can donate, please! POP Money is available for bank-to-bank transfers. Email JtC to make a monthly donation.
♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ Bye bye Miss American Pie (with apologies to Don McLean)
Kiss it goodbye
I'm trying to. The only time I go back is when somebody I care about here links to GOS. The other day Firefox updated automatically and something happened to my dkos connection. It was totally trashed. Shah had never seen anything like the mish mash the site became. Everything else on every other site was okay. I fixed it today as it was some kind of malfunction in Mozilla's update all it took was refresh Firefox. I being a superstitious non sciencewoman have determined that it was artificial intelligence at work. My browser had had enough of the garbage emminiating out of GOS. The message I kept getting said this site is unsecured and full of shit.
Now it's back and I can read and assimilate the idiocracy from all of the factions who like to endlessly argue about how many brainwashed Royalist Democrat's you can fit on the head of a pin. Enough is enough and if ever people of good spirit need to abandon ship this is it. Why bother? Seriously it is pure evil.
Hey now the bar on Firefox or Windows that opens up new windows or allows edit and cut an paste and all that jazz is gone.Be back once I figure out how to get it back.
Kos broke my addiction to TOP
with the Diktat of March 15. TOP may still be important, and hard on for Hillary, but I am enjoying c99p more. I am signed out of TOP for now, and I haven't really spent much time there this past week. They may get 200 times more traffic than this site does, but this site has attracted a lot of TOP's former high-profile diarists. I think that folks who have spent so much of their time and energy to contribute to the site, and have gotten the banhammer, can also break their addiction to a web site. I am ready to move on.
If I ever did go back, I would just say fuck it, and speak my mind about Hillary and any other conservadem, neoliberal, or boot-licking establishment politician whom the site's owner happens to approve.
For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
John Maynard Keynes, 1930
I posted this on an open thread...
But it seems more appropriate here: If Daily Kos doesn't like what you're saying there, and if you're here that's likely the case, they are gathering and sharing information about all the sites you have accounts on, and they are keeping track of what you post everywhere. I haven't posted there for two years, but since I resurfaced here and on the Reddit, they were immediately aware of it.
They will do anything to keep control of their message, including cyberstalking and bullying. They are capable of stooping to the lowest lows. Watch yourself out there.
"Then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every word of that piece of sh*t and I'm never reading again !"- Officer Barbrady
So is the NSA, so I hear
All the more reason to give them more to work with. Solidarity!
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
Let them look
I truly, dearly, deeply do not give two shits, a damn or a flying fuck what They think and what They do. They can sit on a stiff pole and spin until they scream for all I care. They do not dictate what I think, say, or feel anywhere online.
If you're all about "being threatening", "putting it out there in people's heads"--and you don't really mean well--well, I am going to say it as politely as I can--get lost with that shit, it's just nonsense.
If you're "just sayin'"? Try not to, but if you must say so anyway? Understand that it does not matter. Not now and not ever.
Zactly
You don't change the world by constantly being afraid of being found out.
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
This straddling the Democratic party thing is
confusing. Or maybe that's not what it is.
I know what you mean AL
let it be. It's not anything you can straddelize. Either you accept it as it stands or forget it about it as there is no way anything is going to change what it is. Confuses me as I got no idea what good it does to even engage with it. I'm not a Democrat anymore I became an active Dem. to fight the Bushies. Before this I was a luke warm Democratic voter. My Democratic activism did nothing, nothing at all. The killers kept on killing the swindlers kept on pillaging and it little matters which party they fly under. What is it my friend? As if I don't know.
I suppose the lip service vs the actual focus
bothers me most. The "revolution" and the democratic party and Daily Kos and issues and you name it, it's straddling and like paddling upstream, or maybe pissing into the wind. He's running as a Dem but he's not a Dem and he wants to improve the party but it's not about that and OWS supports him but it's the Democratic party. Ya, Revolucion! Just Vote!
I hear ya, when the Bushies became the Democrats that was the end.
It's looking for something better
and you have to be somewhere bad before you can see something better. Otherwise "something better" isn't noticeable.
Lovely post
And a most interesting comment thread.
It's reaching my bedtime so I'll to abandon you. I'm too young and beautiful to stay up late.
Thanks to everyone for sending me off with a hopeful frame of mind.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
The MAIN part about supporting a candidate
is that you BELIEVE he will win.
I have been a True Believer and I'm not going to stop believing until after the convention.
I believe he will win because I know he is winning!
And fuck that other place.
Yup. And I have to laugh
lately at the persistent attempts to put on verbal beatdowns in order to dissuade and discourage such a belief here on this blog. It's important to point out that I don't mean the original poster, gjohnsit--though I'm sad at the discouragement he is feeling. But therein lies the difference. In fact, you can juxtapose the poster's falling faith next to the amateur execution hither and yon of the Debbie Downer Bernie Sucks Patrols in any given comments section, including this one. That shit always stands out like a sore thumb anyway, but it's so much more obvious here.
I also don't understand what they actually get out of it. But that's probably because I don't have the capacity for the mental gymnastics one must have to do, to maintain their own conscience alongside the belief that "If you dare leave that other cesspool, I'm going to follow you wherever you go to try and talk to others, and I will continue putting verbal beatdowns on you. And my words are so important, that no matter what I say, you will listen and you will obey" and then whatever words they use, you'll just cling to every one.
Yeah, good luck with that, assholes! You aren't all that. Never forget it. If you do, someone will remind you.
Here on this blog?
I don't think so. While I appreciate and admire your fighting spirit on GOS no verbal beat down is going on here. In fact the only beat down I have encountered here was my own insanity. You definitely need to get out of your hostile reactionary mindset as regards to this site. Believe me nothing said on GOS is clinging to any of the users of cc99%. Relax kick off your shoes and get over dkos. Get over expecting the Democrat's to offer you anything that resembles democracy or a loyal opposition and don't beat your head against a brick wall.
I hope
that you don't think I'm referring to you, first of all, because nowhere did I reference you, and I wouldn't. Thing is, I have my notions and my opinions, and that's not going to change and I will stand by them.
To be even more clear, this is not even on my radar, in my comment or anywhere else, that I can see. I never said it:
My understanding of "the users of cc99%" is that they can be anybody with an Internet account and a decent left-leaning disposition, that wishes to join. If the admins approve, you're in. Some of us are a little more outspoken and frank than others, and I think this space accommodates that very well.
That being said, people can make their own judgments about other comments just like I can, so yours is what it is. I will tell you, however, that if you read "hostility" in mine, I'm not sure what to say, other than "you should know better by now that I am an....acquired taste
But let me be clear, I wasn't trying to convey hostility, I was trying to convey a steadfast "certainty" and "resolve"--something along the lines of "do not try to pull the wool over other peoples' eyes here", because like it or not, those who only come here to troll or mock or talk down or start shit will certainly get themselves noticed a lot faster, among the much nicer breed of independent thinkers we have around here.
In fact, I feel pretty certain I've seen more than a couple in the last couple of months, but other than one time of me emailing an admin, I never said a word about any of them. But I never saw those posters more than once, so as far as I'm concerned, the admins are doing a bang-up job. If you're an admin and you're insulted by my tone, I apologize, because that was not my intent, but I'm just not going to suffer any assholes or assholishness gladly here. I did enough of that over there.
Ha. Anna Shane finally banned.
Complete a-hole.
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