What happened to DU?

[Hamlette]

I've been here since the beginning. The Nader wars were maddening and the primary got pretty ugly but I've never had to "go to my room" (BOG) before. I could usually find enough ppl in GD or GDP who seemed to make sense to pay attention. Now I see threads with 200+ recommendations completely trashing the dems.

Are they too young to know that while HCR is not ideal it is better than not passing anything?

Are they republicans?

Are they Hillary supporters who didn't get over it?

Are the 9/11 truther types?

It's ugly when providing health care for 31 million people and prohibiting health insurance companies from dropping you for a preexisting condition is a bad thing.

Who are these people and what motivates them?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. All of the above.

The problem is that it's allowed. Plain and simple.

[RoyGBiv]

2. It's the same as it always was ...

DU has been populated from the beginning by a very loud contingent of people who blame everything on whoever is in power at any given moment. Many of them live inside their heads where they've built a Utopian fantasy world, and any intrusion upon that fantasy by the real world out here sets them off. The main difference between now and before Jan. 2008 is that they and we all happened to agree on the appropriate target. But, to many people, it doesn't matter *who* is in the White House. It will never be the right person.

What motivates these people is hate. They're mad, often for justifiable reasons, and they need a target. Any target less than The Person in Charge isn't good enough.

[Kaleva]

3. I had started thread here expressing your very same opinion.

[RoyGBiv]

4. Great minds and all ...

:)

Sorry I missed your thread. I've avoided DU almost entirely for the last couple weeks. Felt ornery today, so I thought I'd ramble for awhile.

[Cha]

9. Very Loud and they always have to

have the last word no matter how stupid.

[goclark]

27. That's because

they are an organized effort ~ it is orchestrated on a daily basis.

[NJmaverick]

5. All of these above and then some

you forget those that believed Obama would ignore the consequences and immediately surrender Afghanistan to the Taliban

the anarchists and greens who just hated Bush and never supported the Dems or their goals

You know there is a reason that the liberals only make up 20% of the population while conservatives make up twice that at 40%. Liberals have a bad habit of being self destructive. I suspect a major reason for this is that they are younger and lack the wisdom that comes with life experience.

[SkyDaddy7]

6. Exactly!

They do not realize that you have to make small changes with time while staying focused on your long term goals...It seems many thought Obama would change everything as soon as he stepped into office!

Look how long the religious right has been at it tearing down the seperation of church and state! They are not eating their own when they lose in the courts they just keep going & going!

As soon as many liberals did not get everything they wanted in the HCR they began attacking each other! It is almost like spoiled children. IMHO.

[GoCubsGo]

7. Spoiled children....

I swear, when I hear some of these people, this is what goes through my head every time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7nG3KvZDA

If only there was a garbage chute for them...

[SkyDaddy7]

11. PRICELESS!!!

[SkyDaddy7]

12. Do you ever feel this way?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM360e3lCmc

[RoyGBiv]

15. !!!!!!!

:spray:

:rofl:

OHMYGODTHAT'SFUNNY!

Thank you for sharing. Did you do that?

I have a feeling I'm going to be linking to that rather often. :)

[SkyDaddy7]

20. I love it!

you have a colorful screen name! LOL!

[GoCubsGo]

16. That's me...

...on a good day, lately.

[Number23]

19. Oh. My. GOD. That is about to become my THEME SONG

for the remaining time that I'm still here.

Priceless!! :rofl:

[goclark]

22. That is a DUZY

Best laugh I've had here in years!

[SkyDaddy7]

26. AGAIN, look at what folks are saying about...

the latest very good news about Obama's handling of the economy...Folks here on DU simply hate Obama, why? Because he has not done everything they wanted in one year? WTF? Please help me?

[Peacetrain]

21. That is so good!!!!

[Drunken Irishman]

17. Who'd want to be associated with these twits?

I wouldn't classify myself as liberal either if I knew I'd be lumped with a great deal of the fools here.

If Ted Kennedy had not fallen ill and died and lived to see this debate, I'm sure every leftist asshole here would've turned on him as a corporate whore. :eyes:

[Cha]

8. And, I might add..

Other primary candidate supporters who didn't get over it.

Some of the best suppporters Pres Obama has are former Hillary supporters..I should know I debated with them enough.:)

[RoyGBiv]

10. Quite true ...

The one great lesson my time on DU has taught me is that political junkies come in many, many forms. I spent too much of my life insulated within a political culture that lacked what I call the "sports fan" version of political animal. Being from Oklahoma, "my side" lost a lot more than it won, and the people with whom I was involved developed a closeness in spirit that didn't allow for this kind of factionalism. If anyone was just in it to cheer for their team and then go home and sulk if that team lost, they didn't last long around us and were weeded out fairly quickly.

Online, semi-anonymous forums give these kinds of people a kind of strength they don't have in the real world. Whining, screaming, crying Monday-morning quarterbacks don't last long there. In the digital world, they breed like rats.

Hell, I was not an Obama supporter during the primaries, but I am a Democratic political animal, and the minute his nomination was assured, no one else mattered, and I've been solidly behind him ever since ... and will remain so through 2016.

[Hamlette]

13. good points Roy

I shouldn't be surprised how furious they are. Hell, you'd think Obama started a war based on made up evidence.

And I also suppose part of it is my age. I was one of those assholes who took over the mass meetings to give McGovern the nomination. How's that working out for us?

The older I get, and I like to think it has to do with life experience, the more I recognize I didn't freaking know it all when I was 20. How odd is that?

I suppose that's why all us old ladies are so fat. We've had to eat our own words. I guess I get some comfort from knowing they will too.

[RoyGBiv]

14. I must disagree with you there ...

As we age we tend to gain weight. This is because our heads fill up with knowledge, and eventually the ol' noggin' will get full. Well, we have a choice then of either forgetting things, not learning anything else, starving ourselves, or just letting the knowledge overflow and while we continue to eat like normal people do. All that extra padding is just a lifetime of wisdom.

With each new chin, I just think ... my, my, I got a little smarter today. :)

(Okay, I stole that from someone, but I don't remember who.)

Somewhat more seriously, idealism has its place. We need idealists. We needed all those people storming lecture halls and making demands on the lawn of the White House and agitating in the churches and in the streets. Without the ideas the idealists push, we grow complacent and stagnant.

But idealists can't run things. They've never been very good at that. Idealists tend to end up trusting either people who can't hold power or who hold it far, far too well and too long.

Idealists bring us ideas. Pragmatists run the show. Conservatives sit in the balcony and throw rocks and complain. This is the natural order of things. :)

[Cha]

18. Oh, I missed this post earlier!

"Online, semi-anonymous forums give these kinds of people a kind of strength they don't have in the real world. Whining, screaming, crying Monday-morning quarterbacks don't last long there. In the digital world, they breed like rats."

Bullseye!

I was the same after Kerry won over Dean..well maybe not right away, it took me a few days to get over it but I was a neophyte having just gotten into politics in 2000(not bc of age but lack of an earlier awareness).

I like all our Dems who are working for the greater good and not grandstanding as narcissistic egomaniacs.

The dems who are( Lieberman, Nelson, Stupak, Kucinich, et..) make those efforts by the ones who can work together shine even brighter.

[RoyGBiv]

23. I was lucky ...

I somehow managed to have excellent mentors. My grandma was the first and most important of these, but a political science professor I had in 87-88 had a huge influence as well.

That was the year I was first able to vote in a presidential election. I was taking intro to political science and jumped at the chance to be more directly involved in the campaign in Oklahoma when it was offered by the professor. I got involved well before the primaries were even running hot, so I saw it from beginning to the long, tragic end.

One huge thing I took away from the experience involved a meeting I had with the professor after the convention. He hated Dukakis, not because he disliked his principles or thought he would have made a bad President. He hated him because he believed he was a horrible candidate. He didn't trust the polls, which at the time had Dukakis leading by huge margins. He'd seen the way Bush's team worked up close in personal back in 1980. He had, in other words, a very, very bad feeling.

He talked with me for awhile about pros and cons, challenged me on my idealism without belittling it, and helped me plan out my small part of the campaigning process in our county.

Toward the end of this, after hearing so much negativity from him, I finally just flat out asked him if he didn't perhaps think he was creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by expecting Dukakis to lose. And I'll never forget the way he responded.

Paraphrasing heavily: "What I am saying about Dukakis doesn't leave this room. We're two political operatives talking about realities and possibilities. This isn't ideology. This isn't dreaming. The is real political work. This is a strategy discussion. When I leave this room, no one will have the slightest idea I am not 100% certain Dukakis will win, and no one will be able to question how hard I will work to make that happen. There's a difference between having a reasonable, reality-based discussion in private and undermining your candidate in public. From this moment forward, Dukakis is the man."

And he was completely honest about this. That guy worked his ass off in a state that he knew logically didn't have a snowball's chance of coming within 10 percentage points of choosing Dukakis, but he worked it anyway, and he kept all of us working with him inspired.

I learned more about politics and how it works from him in a year and a half than I've learned from countless throngs of the whining, screaming multitudes in the 20 odd years since.

He didn't always lose either. He turned out to be a pretty good Clinton-appointed federal judge down the road.

[Cha]

24. Thanks for sharing your earlier political experience, Biv..

Your professor could teach a lot to many who don't know how to keep their eye on the prize.

[JeffR]

25. This should be an OP

and not simply for the BOG. A lot of people very badly need to read this and think about it. A huge part of politics is neatly summarized here. Too many posters whom I always used to think of as astute seem to believe politics should be a Transformers sequel, rather than the grimy, often heartbreaking and invariably mundane thing it actually is.

Maturity doesn't have much of a foothold on the political intertubes, but stories like this might help some.

[freddie mertz]

28. Deleted.