None of us should be angry at Clinton supporters.

gcomeau

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Apr-25-08 03:59 PM
Original message

None of us should be angry at Clinton supporters.

This is a conclusion I've just reached after giving the ongoing silliness on these forums some thought. You see, I've come to the conclusion that all the arguments they're posting against Obama and in favor of Clinton are being forced on them out of a sense of loyalty and I can at least respect loyalty to a degree.

Undoubtedly, many of you would like a bit of elaboration on that.

Here's the thing. Yes, they've been posting arguments that Obama is unelectable that are patently absurd, and which even if accepted result in being forced to the conclusion that Clinton is far more unelectable under the exact same criteria. Yes they've bombarded us with claims that Obama needs to win states by up to 30 more points than he actually needs to take them by and behaved like they expected us to believe it. Yes they've gotten increasingly frantic and shrill in their denunciations of every tiny word, gesture and electromagnetic field fluctuation within a 1000 yard radius of Obama in attempts to find things to attack him on.

But, if they're going to loyally support Hillary, what choice has she really given them? They certainly can't post rational arguments for how she can still win or why she's running the way she is... they don't exist. We can't demand they produce the non existent.

I've decided I'm going to make a conscious effort to place the blame for the entire mountainous mass of infuriating absurdity being spewed all over these forums every day squarely where it belongs. On Clinton. It's not Clinton supporters fault that their candidate insists on continuing to run and declare she can win when there remains no rational argument to support her contention, that's Hillary's fault. Her supporters are just victims of her refusal to acknowledge reality and her insistence that her supporters follow her lead.

I think keeping this in mind is pretty much the only way I'm going to be able to not carry a long standing animosity towards many posters here once the pure GE campaign begins, because frankly, the arguments that do remain for Clinton have one thing in common... they are incredibly, amazingly, astoundingly insulting our intelligence. And that is one thing that really, really pisses me off. But if I can keep that directed entirely at Clinton and maintain the mindset that her supporters are just as victimized by being forced to resort to presenting these preposterous arguments as the rest of us are by being forced to read them then I can refrain from permanently associating the people posting them with a group who are calling me a moron with a 15 second memory span 150 times a day. Which is what the vast majority of these arguments are in fact doing. If you try to convince someone that they should follow your financial advice because you won a monolopy game once you're calling them an idiot... and the same is true of you try to convince someone that their candidate who is leading an election by an effectively insurmountable margin is doomed if they keep performing better in every state than they need to to maintain the effective insurmountability of that lead (among other insulting-to-our-intelligence arguments being thrown around here).

That's my new stance and I'm sticking to it as best I can. Clinton thinks we're idiots, her supporters are just forced through their sense of loyalty to regurgitate that distasteful party line. Poor people.

(Yes, I'm aware that it's quite possible, nay probable, that many of these posters would be behaving this way regardless. And yes, you most definitely can argue that every individual poster should be responsible for their own conduct... but frankly if I operate under that assumption and this goes on too much longer then I'm going to spend the next several months having the sight of any number of member names trigger a near murderous rage. So leave me my coping mechanism, if you don't mind.)