Dean & Clark supporters doing Rove's dirty work:

[JNelson6563]

I am growing increasingly horrifed at what I see on the GD page.

Everyone is calling everyone else's candidates lairs and speaking in dark hints, stating opinion as fact and all in all making fools of themselves by acting as Freepers would.

I look at our situation, to anyone too busy bashing candidates that situation could correctly be termed "political wilderness". We have nothing. No House, no Senate, no White House. We don't hold nearly enough State Congresses either.

Now scroll down GD with an objective eye, read those titles. Consider our situation anew and tell me if you do not see some obvious answers as to how we arrived at it.

Do I advocate becoming subscribers to group think? Of course not. I do think we should rise about Rove's Mayberry Machiavellian tactics at the very least when dealing with each other!!!

I am coming to believe that this is the dregs of the party, the hotheads who are so zealous and blind by emotional judgements that it truly is the left's equivalent to Free Republic. I am very appreciative that, for the most part, this slop doesn't spill to much over to LBN.

It's to the point that, when citing DU (as I frequently do) for where Ilearned about all the latest politico stuff, I make it a point to instruct people to go to LBN. I always add that they don't want to bother with "the others" so much--hoping they will avoid stumbling on to the absurd, Freeper-like/Ditto-head behavior increasingly on display.

Julie

On edit: Since posting this a prime example of the behavior I am talking about sprung up. Quite helpful.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=422605

[poskonig]

1. I agree. We need to work together.

Gephardt bashed Dean today, and we don't see the Dean people going bezerk. The Clarkies need to calm down.

[not systems]

18. Isn't that the truth

The Clark supports better get a little thicker skinned.

If their man goes any where he is going to have to take
punches much worse the what Dean gave today.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

2. Reminds me of Bush vs. McCain vs. Buchanan on FR in 2000

I used to read over there a lot more before I discovered DU, and since a few months ago, DU reminds me of FR more than ever.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

15. Yeah

The Freepers said Bush was the "Real Deal" and John McCain was a apostate....

Sound familiar....

[robbedvoter]

3. While I entirely agree with the unity sentiment (tried proposing it here

myself lately) I find it funny that this comes in the form of an accusation from a supporter of the candidate making the accusations.
Sp, confronting the accusation is helping Karl Rove? Am I supposed to laugh at myself as Gore did with the internet invention for the Dean's supporters to NOT consider me divisive?

[JNelson6563]

12. I was not directing this at

any particular thread or poster. I don't have a problem with civil discussion. It's stuff like name-calling, insinuations, trying to dress up opinions as facts and other so called methods.

I'm not sure what you have written refer to here but if your stuff fits the categories I name and other counter-product ones not named then YEAH, I'm talkin' to you and others like you in ANY camp.

As to me being a Dean supporter, yes, I am. Why not do a search and find all my posts where I launch attacks at the other candidates? I'll tell you what. You'll have better luck if you were to look for posts where I talk about acting like civilized adults instead of mindless Freepers hacking away at each other.

Shall we continue to follow Bush and the rest of the extreme right wing in the fine example of tone for political dialogue that they set? Or, we could set out to show this country politics does not have to descend to the bowels of human behavior.....

Julie--the apparent idealist--my apologies to John Kleeb ;-)

[Sagan]

4. I ABSOLUTELY agree!

I'm going to vote with my feet and my wallet if this keeps up. I don't see any reason to donate to a RNC focus group.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

5. The FIRST Candidate To Go Negative Against the Other Loses, IMO

Dean did that this morning. I suspect he will regret it keenly, before this race is through.

DTH

[CMT]

7. actually

Kerry brought up this issue well before Dean. He said he was fighting Nixon and Reagan while Clark was voting for them. Also, Lieberman has spoken out on this.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

10. I Know, But I'd Expected Better of Dean

I was a staunch defender of his, and he was my #2. I thought he was supposed to be better than "just another politician" and I thought he would be more honest than this.

What I was referring to was Dean going negative against Clark first, as opposed to Clark going negative against Dean.

DTH

[ThirdWheelLegend]

9. Do not agree

Negatives as in insults are one thing. But to point out policy differences and why SOME ARE BETTER than others is ESSENTIAL.

Otherwise we vote based on popularity and appearance.


TWL

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LittleApple81]

8. I have a question: I profoundly dislike the vitriol being launched

against all the candidates that are thought to have the best shot at the Democratic nomination. I am still ABB but when I read accusations, I investigate further. Also, the people that are pro-the-vitriol-attacked candidate do the same and they provide good rebuttals (or not...) This has helped me have a clearer view of the candidates good/bad points.

Therefore, even when I dislike the vitriol, being a Democrat and knowing that I won't vote for anything else but a democratic candidate, it does not hurt me to read all the crappola being thrown around.

However, we know we have Rove's people (Republicans that believe all the Repug lines) in DU as participants and lurkers, we are providing fodder for their attacks on any real good candidate and on whomever gets the nomination. And these attacks won't be analyzed by Democrats who are informed and know what is going on but by the mostly-missinformed (or non-informed) American public. THAT IS WHEN ALL THIS VITRIOL IS GOING TO HURT US.

My question: how can you avoid providing the tools for the "Rovenians" if that is what we call them and at the same time keep the DUers informed?

Edited to add the question, sorry.

[JNelson6563]

14. We can start by

resisting the temptation to use such things as "well I once hear this and that ugly thing aobut Candidate X" into a discussion without any kind of evidence whatsoever. This is merely the act of planting a seed in the minds of readers, most of which are not likely to do the investigating you or I or others would. It's "dirty politics" and it sickens me to see some of "our own" stoop to it, regularly.

Just one of many things that could be stopped/changed in this discussion of politics.

There is no doubt that this can be a valuable place for information. I love DU and benefit greatly from it. It's the increasing amounts of worthless and worse-than-worthless content that troubles me.

Julie

[EagleEye]

11. But Doesn't General Discussion mean...generally discussing?

Yes, it gets heated, but we are passionate. That is crucial in energizing our vote.

[JNelson6563]

13. It's a matter of tone

Do we want to follow the right-wingers down the path of complete and total viciousness or, dare we strive for a little civility? To be so uncivil smacks of mindless drone-ism. I like to think there is no place for that in this party.

Julie

[liberalmuse]

16. I need a break...

I'm going to tune out all the campaigns for awhile. I'm disgusted at everyone who is putting up the ugly smears on our Dem candidates here at DU, disgusted with the news, disgusted with everything to do with the Presidential campaign. I'm embarrassed by some of my fellow Dean supporters for participating in the candidate bashing. You are hurting Dean, because supporters of other candidates are going to be so pissed off at the smears against their candidate that they may well stay home on election day rather than support Dean. I'm so burned out on all of this--disillusioned, too. At this point, I'm thinking of opting out the meetup this week. I just don't give a &*%$ right now, because I don't see much of a difference between conservative and liberal ugliness.

[TrueBlueDem]

17. I am redirecting my time previously devoted to DU...

...to positive activities that will help get my candidate elected.

Looking at these p!ssing contests between supporters of various candidates and seeing how much time is wasted, I concluded I do not want to be part of it.

The time I previously spent at the computer reading and occassionally participating in these discussions will now be spend more productively:

-- Sending e-mails to acquaintances to inform them of my candidate and encouraging them to volunteer.

-- Downloading voter registration forms and encouraging people to register to vote.

-- Downloading and printing out campaign literature

-- Learning my candidate's stands on the issue so I can better answer questions when staffing campaign booths.

-- Writing e-mails to media outlets that present false or unfair info about my candidate.

-- Building a website for local supporters of my candidate.

-- Coordinating upcoming activities with other local supporters.

-- Contributing the occasional donation online.

-- Visiting online caldendars of events in my area to find places where fellow local supporters can distribute information about my candidate.

[MoonRiver]

19. It's sickening. I believe many Rove plants are actually on this board

causing trouble between members, who are normally united in our efforts to defeat *. The fanatical, irrational nature of the posts makes me highly suspicious. This language has never been so extreme, even toward LIEberman, who most of us loath. ABB, even LIEberman, has always been the predominant theme. Frankly, I smell a whole nest full of rats. The question is, what will the board moderators do about it? Perhaps there should only be one or two threads allowed for bashing each candidate??

[Skwmom]

20. Dean is doing Rove's dirty work

by lying about the other candidates. Maybe, you should send Dean a letter.

[Pepperbelly]

21. the Dean avatar and the

holding up of Clark supporters as the 'bad guys' in your example, reveal quite a bit.

So should we all just start supporting Dean now?

[RandomUser]

25. Exactly

They accuse Clark supporters of being close-minded mindless follow the leader types, conforming to the bandwagon and that everyone is pushing for them to support Clark. And yet that's exactly how many of the Dean supporters are behaving with respect to Dean.

I was for Dean before Clark entered, and then Dean dropped to my second choice. But now, I'm starting to rethink having Dean as my second choice if Clark drops out. Maybe I'll go Kerry or Graham if Clark drops.

[JNelson6563]

28. and they line right up

As I just remarked to the very active-in-bash-threads Pepperbelly I made it a point to include Dean supporters.

Perhaps you didn't notice that part?

Julie

[RandomUser]

30. And if you'll read

my comment lower in this thread (and earlier too), you'll find I too have made a point of including both sides.

[JNelson6563]

32. And so I have done so

I've read and responded to your post below. I simply didn't appreciate the insinuation that I was singling out Clark supporters and wondered how you, in light of your fair-minded response below, could have concurred....

Perhaps I was mistaken and you did not. (?)

Julie

[RandomUser]

34. Perhaps

There was a misunderstanding. I don't concur that you in this particular post were singling out Clark supporters for negativity. But I was concurring with the sentiment that a number of Dean supporters are doing Rove's dirty work for him (and there's probably a few Clark supporters doing similar). And my statement of how I view the stance of some Dean supporters towards Clark supporters vs. how the Dean supporters seem to behave stands. It does seem a bit hypocritical of the Dean supporters. Note, I say some, not all Dean supporters.

[JNelson6563]

27. But the inclusion

of Dean supporters wasn't noteworthy? I'd say that was th emost revealing of all. I have previously chided supporters of Dean and even was told I'd be "watched more closely" so I think I've been pretty even-handed.

Can you say same?

Julie

[Suspicious]

22. I am sorely disappointed, as well.

I've been reading and posting here since shortly after September 11, 2001, and DU has become an entirely different place, to me, in the last several months. Where once I enjoyed reading intelligent debate and informed discussion, now I see childish, pointless attacks on a regular basis - not only against candidates, but personal, as well. One of the qualities that drew me to these forums was the "information clearinghouse" aspect. I could come to DU and find more information than I could digest. This seems to be less the case now, with the candidate attack threads taking up so much of the discussion and posters' energy.

While it is completely understandable - and expected - that debate will heat up the closer we get to 2004, it is not understandable or expected to see a generally intelligent, open-minded group of people turn into mindless attack-bots. The quality of discussion in GD has degenerated to such an astounding degree, I read only a few threads, where I used to read as many as I could fit in between the events of the rest of my life.

I can not understand the mentality behind attacking candidates simply because they are not your candidate, with no basis whatsoever in fact. Also, I can not understand why, when someone does post intelligent speculation or or thought-provoking questions with regard to any particular candidate, or the candidates in general, they are pounced on immediately from all corners, and denounced as a "radical leftist", or any other of several derogatory versions of the term.

I was not here to see the level of discussion and debate for the 2000 election, so I am waiting it out to see if things settle down after this election is over. I suppose I'll just have to pick and choose what I read, for the time being, and continue to hope for better days.

[LittleApple81]

23. When I first saw all the vitriol, I started suggesting to start a new

forum for candidate discussions. This was nixed by the administrators. So now I do my own filtering. The only problem is that it takes me a long time to filter and get to the more interesting discussion of day-to-day issues and ideas. I too hope that all this will quiet down after the Democratic candidate is selected.

[RandomUser]

24. The prime vitriol

Seems to be between the Clark and Dean supporters. In my opinion, it seems there are a lot more Clark-bashing Deanies than Dean-bashing Clarkies. But both sides are spreading the vitriol.

My theory is that the Deanies are reacting to seeing Clark come out on top in a recent poll (mostly name recognition), and the fact that many Clark supporters (such as myself) were formerly for Dean, meaning Dean's losing people to Clark. Then the Clarkies respond to the Clark-bashing and further the cycle started. Both sides are responsible for the ill-will here.

What really pisses me off is that the same idiotic arguments are used over and over again even after they've been addressed and in most cases refuted. Pick any one issue, and I guarantee you will see MULTIPLE threads started with the SAME issue. Almost as if they're trying to flood the thread topics with that issue. Try to influence people with sheer numbers instead of being willing to debate it. And the funny thing is that that issue has probably been refuted days before in one of the gazillion threads named after that issue.

Sigh. I'm relatively new to DU, is it like this during the off-campaign season too?

[Julien Sorel]

29. No, it used to be sane.

But then Dean came along, and a few people fell in love -- too early, as it turns out -- and now everyone's going to pay. The Deanies used to bash Kerry when he was on top, as well.

[JNelson6563]

31. at least you are honest

and here's what I mean:

Seems to be between the Clark and Dean supporters. In my opinion, it seems there are a lot more Clark-bashing Deanies than Dean-bashing Clarkies. But both sides are spreading the vitriol.

My theory is that the Deanies are reacting to seeing Clark come out on top in a recent poll (mostly name recognition), and the fact that many Clark supporters (such as myself) were formerly for Dean, meaning Dean's losing people to Clark. Then the Clarkies respond to the Clark-bashing and further the cycle started. Both sides are responsible for the ill-will here.

The bolded parts are things you don't hear from "bashers". That was one of the things I was sure to address, the attmepts to disguise opinion as fact. You do not do that here, I would say your post is a great example of civil discussion. You make clear this is opinion and theory and I think you fairly assess blame to both parties involved (where it belongs IMO).

What really pisses me off is that the same idiotic arguments are used over and over again even after they've been addressed and in most cases refuted. Pick any one issue, and I guarantee you will see MULTIPLE threads started with the SAME issue. Almost as if they're trying to flood the thread topics with that issue. Try to influence people with sheer numbers instead of being willing to debate it. And the funny thing is that that issue has probably been refuted days before in one of the gazillion threads named after that issue.

I agree with this completely and it applies to several candidates. The bolded part is especially noteworthy because it is exactly what the right wing did and achieved great political success for their trouble. Hence my words about acting right-wing in this thread. Their behavior, the right-wing's, is what got me interested in politics (caught my attention in a bad way) and throwing my lot in with the more civil and rational Dems. Wouldn't know it by this forum lately, that's for sure.

Thanks for your thoughtful post.

Julie

[Q]

26. I would like to make an effort to differentiate between...

...what some posters 'round here call 'Dem-bashing' and smears on candidates. I'm known as a 'dem-basher' because I start threads questioning the direction of the party and their appeasement of the Bush* administration.

- But attacking individual candidates is a different matter. They should all be given a chance to speak out and debate until the nomination process. And there's a difference between questioning a candidates qualifications and intentionally trying to smear their character.

- The thread you link is indeed a prime example of a 'smear'...not an attempt at civil discussion.

[kayleybeth]

33. Before Clark jumped in the race

Dean was my candidate... sort of. I wasn't convinced that he could beat the shrub, but I liked what he had to say. I donated whatever I could whenever he would bring out the bat.

When Clark announced, I got behind him and I am still behind him. The hatred and vitriol (mostly from Dean supporters) on this board have done nothing to shake my faith in Clark. It just makes me dislike a lot of the Dean supporters.

I'm sure the same goes for those who have chosen to support Dean over Clark. Bashing each others' candidates doesn't help our common cause, which is to get shrub OUT of our white house. JNelson6563 is right, the bashers on both sides are only making Rove's job that much easier.

JMO

Kayeleigh

[madison]

35. I think many who are currently posting here are Karl Rove moles

I think many who are currently posting here are Karl Rove moles who have infiltrated DU in order to create mischief, mayhem and hate among Democrats and other left-leaning voters.

REAL Democrats and REAL leftists KNOW the enemy is George W. Bush and NOT the other Democratic candidates.

And I think some of the more naïve DU posters need to think about that when they give these hate-precipitators any credibility.

I think we all have to be on guard againstKarl Rove-planted false rumors, false spins and false interpretations.

Before DUers accept certain "quotes" as real, they should demand links to the original statements -- and not just to someone's interpretation or misquoting of the Democratic candidates.

We all have a common enemy: George W. Bush.

And anyone who interferes with our ability to stand together in this fight -- and anyone who encourages infighting among us -- should be viewed with immense suspicion.

[warrior1]

37. Amen.

self destruction....

[joe_momma]

36. what is the phone number for Howard Deans Lair?

[salin]

38. Way to many people

have gone WAY over the bend. Disgusting behavior on DU today.

[RandomUser]

40. Tell me about it

I actually saw someone say they're not ABB but ABC. Instead of Anyone But Bush, they'd be Anyone But Clark, even if they have to vote for Bush. That sounds scary to think that DU'ers would vote for Bush if they had to.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

39. By the time they use it against our candidate, we will be immune

that's the best part - ALL THE DEMOCRACY YOU CAN STAND - whatever crap the publicans think up we'll have heard it before and be able to counter it.