What happens on DU once the primaries are over?

I only occasionally lurked during the last Presidential election.
There are a lot of posters on here who vehemently dislike one Democratic candidate or another,once the candidate is picked,do they have to get on board? I'm not asking this because I plan on bashing any candidate,I would be happy to support any of them against a Republican. I'm just curious as to how this works.

nice and got behind Kerry the last time and only time I was here for a primary.

we need this every four years or so, though - just to re-assess what we stand for, without measuring it by what we stand against.

that's what I was hoping.

:eyes:

I know for a fact that some pleple who 'claim' to support one candidate are only here to bash all the others. I am sure freeperville has assigned each of their clones one candidate each so they will have free reign to trash and bash the others.

So very obvious w/all the rabid anti-candidate X/Y/Z posts... after posts... after posts... and rarely, if ever, a positive post about the candidate that they claim to support... if they even claim to support a Democratic candidate.

...after Kerry had been crowned.

I never saw any infighting on DU and everyone was singing from the same songbook due to Kerry.
It was like a big love in---with a side of glee.

I remember someone commenting on the board about how things were heated and contentious
during the primaries. The person commenting suggested that there was a lot of infighting.

I remember thinking that I couldn't even imagine this place being anything but a giant
pool of support and ooey-gooey love for the Dem candidate.

The point is...things will significantly change once primary season begins. When the Republicans
start ramping up their Plutonium Space Modulator Lie Machine 24/7--we will all be galvanized and
working hard as hell for our Dem candidate.

battling the "Plutonium Space Modulator Lie Machine",instead of fellow Democrats . LOL

Look around for the Democratic Club or Central Committee in your area and join (although you have to be elected to the central committe). It's even more interesting if you are involved instead of just being an activist.

through my union, and worked with them during our last Governors race(Granholm)on the phone bank. I have every intention of being involved again during this presidential election. You're right, it's interesting and exiting and makes a difference.

I called weekday afternoons so I was assigned the seniors list as they were more likely to be home. But I found they weren't! So there were lots of answering machines. Calling in the early evening is tricky because people hate their dinner hour interrupted and if you call later they find that irritating too.

However, the people I did talk to were interesting. A lot of rank and file Dems were not up to speed on what was going on and I enjoyed being able to enlighten them.

As for primary season at DU, this is my first one. I was here during the 04 election campaign and there was heady excitement all over the board. We were all looking at the polls and being encouraged. We'll be a little more restrained this time I am sure.

7:00 pm shift, so I don't think I got the angry dinner crowd. I only talked to a few belligerent republicans. The hardest part was talking to some very lonely senior citizens who obviously wanted someone/anyone to talk to.Lots of lonely people out there.

know who's running in each major party. With Ned's campaign, there were quite a few people who didn't know a thing about him but they'd had years of Joe and knew him.

But let's face it: there are lots of people out there who don't follow politics they way we do here at DU. It's a shame...

I keep forgetting who said that, but it's especially true here.

We unite behind the candidate insofar as we plan to vote for him/her.

However, when that candidate does something boneheaded, you will read about it in great detail here. We don't hold back simply because the party has decided.

J/K

I stayed there once. Cool hotel.

My room had 2 tvs, and one of them was in the bathroom!

I stayed at the Marriott in Crystal City for the Fourth Of July in 1990... Saw DC and Paul McCartney at RFK Stadium...It still stands as the best time of my life...

DC and the nation was a much more fun place even though there was a Bush in in the White House then too...

were unable to vote in the primaries.

... those who cannot accept who the nominee is and is vocal about is will disappear. Some will start their own message boards to complain about how the nomination was stolen from their candidate and to gossip about other DU members.

Most will pile on Republicans, get behind the nominee and defend him/her.

knows far better than the candidate how to run a campaign.

I truly believe no one will come out of the primaries with enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot.

Thankfully.

Then we get back to fighting. :headbang:

After the nomination, we become united. I can't imagine a situation in which 08 would be any different, even tho I suspect it'd take a little more effort, given the probable outcome.

about their true feelings.

Last time around it wasn't all sweetness and light - a large group of disgruntled supporters of a beaten candidate went off and formed their own website, another large group ended up getting tombstoned.

That the majority of posters on THAT WEBSITE ended up voting for John Kerry in the end.

I suppose the massive Democratic Congressional Defeats as well as HRC ushering in the Presidency of another republican in 2008 - well, that may be just be enough EVIDENCE to justify booting the DLC corporate whores out of our ranks. :shrug:

Either the partisans bite their tongues, swallow their pride, profess a sudden desire to support someone whom they have spent who knows how many months (years) lambasting, deriding, and insulting, along with those of us here who, like you, simply support ALL of the Democratic party candidates .... OR they tell us to bugger off, and sulk darkly in the shadows, hurling verbal grenades into the forum every few posts ...

I have asked all along how those who promote one candidate and smear all others can show themselves here IF their one candidate is not the nominee ..... Where will they fit in when the chips are down in Nov 08 ?

They remind me of rabid sports fans: like those who paint their faces in the team colors ..... It's kinda lame to show up at the playoffs wearing the team colors of a team that isnt in the running ....

The bashing is ugly .... it's short sighted, and egotistical ..... It's all about 'me' .... not about 'us' .... and that's too bad ..... Because we need EVERYONE on our side ....

of closing ranks behind our candidate, mixed with people decrying the mind-boggling stupidity of nominating ( fill in the blank)...A continuing dialogue about the pros and cons of our nominee is just fine with me, knowing it will continue to be civil and respectful ( I GOTTA see the doctor about those hallucinations). But seriously, if it CAN be honest strategic or philosophical disagreement, I think that's healthy. Not all of it will be, but that's the nature of politics I guess. For myself, I will probably continue to share my serious misgivings re: HRC, if she's nominated, while at the same time, explaining my position to others tempted to refuse to vote for her that I understand where they're coming from. The feeling of the air being let out of the balloon by responding to this attempted fascist coup called the Bush administration by nominating a DLC business (and I DO mean BUSINESS) as usual corporate sellout would be palpable . But I'd use my time and energy to point out that F word: fascist. HRC may be republican -lite ( and those of you who disagree with that assessment absolutely have some valid points), but she sure as hell ain't a fascist, and that's what we're up against. So yeah, she might be willing to play ball with them to a distressing extent, but I don't believe she IS (depending on what the meaning of "is" is) one of them, and right now is, in my opinion, one of those times where the lesser of two evils will need to be grudgingly supported to prevent a far greater evil from extending its already dangerous grip on this country. Whew; I didn't mean to go off like that; I was just gonna give a simple answer to a simple question. Got carried away...again...

Some of DU will joyfully join in and focus on the general election. Some will suck it up, shove their protests into a locked box, and go along.

Some will take their election-related discussions elsewhere, and hope to find some issues threads that don't sink like rocks here at DU. If there are any issues discussions ever posted.

If Mrs. Clinton wins, I think there will probably be a lot of people hanging out in the lounge, as it is against DU rules not to support the party candidate.

but the anointed candidate. That doesn't mean no criticism but in the 2004 election cycle LOTS and LOTS of people, good people, IMO, were needlessly and unfairly tombstoned due to overzealous party wonk moderators. It really was a bloodbath.

DU remains interesting in that all of the Congressional seats, 1/3 of the Senatorial and gubanatorial races all over the country will keep us glued to our seats leading up to election day. There will be lots of close races and, as in 2006, lots of surprises as well.

Even if you don't really have a local stake in the game (my Republican Congresscritter is entrenched and none of my Senators are up in 2008), there will be races all over the country that you can donate to and lend support to.

Some people who can't, stay away for awhile. Others who try to bash in the guise of criticism (trust me the Admins know the difference) are tomb stoned.

ON EDIT: Le Taz Hot, I did not mean to post to your reply, I forgot to back out after reading your response. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

all the way baby!!!

and we fight for the Democratic party as a whole

(or at least that's what I hope happens x()

Some of the most rabid supporters on here last time around channeled their fury against the GOP.

the trolls disappear for the most part, the hypothetical nonsense questions/posts also go the way of the Dodo Bird. The nonsense polls go away.

We have tended to watch local races more closely, watch for election interference by our opposition, watch what goes on in every state very closely and support good candidates whenever possible.

Of late, the number of trolls and troublemakers have risen to epidemic proportions, not only on DU but on most of the other sites.

Without mods, this and other sites would be useless.

We tended to work very closely together in the 2000, 2004, 2006 elections. Hope we can do the same this time around. Just might be the last time we have a country.

There are an awful lot of posters who - stupidly, in my view - regard Hillary as not much better than a Republican. I hope that DU will have the sense to pull together and back her if/when she wins, but I'm not optimistic - I expect to see lots of "why I'm not voting Democratic" flame wars.

Lets hope I'm wrong...

Most people will get behind whoever wins the nomination. But if that person wasn't THEIR choice, some people will not miss an opportunity to point out any mistakes they make along the way.

If Hillary wins the nomination, I don't think things will smooth out as much as they did in '04 once Kerry won.

We piled into the GOP at that point and let them have all kinds of hell.

As for the last election cycle... back during the early days, pre-primaries, I was essentially a lurker who didn't have a specific dog in the fight. Sure, I cared a lot about the issues and the policies and the directions the country might go in, but I hadn't settled on any one person to go all out for until I'd had the opportunity to see what stuff they were made of.

By the time the primary dust had settled, a guy from Massachusetts by the name of Kerry had won the lead-dog slot. "Okay," I remember thinking at the time, "I'm old enough to remember the Winter Soldier hearings and everything that went with them bhack during those intensely difficult years for democracy... I know who this guy was back then and I like what he's been saying during the run-up to the nomination, so I have no problem with backing him 100% now."

In other words, at that point, I decided that I finally did have a specific dog in that fight. A tall, scrappy dog that I could believe in for the duration, no qualms or compromises required. Good deal, eh? You betcha.

DU wasn't my online political community of choice then; truth be told, I didn't really have one of those at the time. The previous several years, I had been rather preoccupied developing and managing online communities for paying customers out in Silicon Valley. (Yeah, I know, I'm another one of those pesky recovering dot-communist types. So sue me.)

What drew me in and rapidly became my online political community of choice in 2004 wasn't an omnibus site, like DU or dKos or suchlike, but the sprawling, outspoken, sometimes rowdy but always loyal community that grew up around the original www.johnkerry.com blog. By the time November '04 rolled around, I was deeply invested in that blog and that community. And, yeah, like everyone else there (and, for that matter, here), I was totally devastated when dawn rose on November 8.

But, ya know, a funny thing happened on the way to 2005. While most of the prog-dem community devolved into a circular firing squad squabble of finger-pointing and blame-throwing, I discovered that the community I'd become so deeply rooted in, and the tall scrappy dog that we'd coalesced around, still made more sense to me than the cacophonous chaos all around us.

And i realized that some, without consciously intending to do so, I'd gone from supporting the blue party's candidate of choice for that election cycle to truly believing in and being committed to the core values and the qualitative worth of the guy that they'd tapped for that slot that year.

So when the johnkerry.com blog community was closed down at the end of 2004, I joined the other core members of that community in hacking out a new home for ourselves in the progressive blogosphere. That particular place in cyberspace has morphed a lot in the years since -- as haven't we all -- but it's still there and it's still strong and I'm still proud to see my byline on all the articles and essays and posts that I wrote for www.democracycellproject.net .

Then last fall, the johnkerry.com blog was relaunched, and I ended up writing for the site and working with the experienced online-political-media team that had been brought back to make it happen again. And as life went on and things continued to grow and change, as that team passed the baton on to the small but solid in-house squad that's running the site these days, somehow I finally ended up with the sig line that you see at the bottom of this post.

No, I didn't buy the company. But I liked the boss so much I joined the company. Which is not exactly representative of how things played out for the other denizens of DU during & after the last election cycle -- and, yes, I did become one of those denizens during that cycle, under a different nom du tron of course -- but that's how things played out for your humble correspondent at least. (Gee, who'd'a thunk it, huh?)

And you know what? It's still a pleasure and a privilege to be here.

but Kerry proved to be someone more for me. I signed on to his campaign earlier than you, but, even so, I surprised even myself to realize that , for the first time in my life, I supported a candidate for truly positive reasons. Not just for pragmatic reasons, not just because he was better than the alternatives, but because I really truly believed he had the Right Stuff, that he would have been a very fine president. And I continue to be impressed by the commitment, energy, thoughtfulness, and sheer grit of his efforts , in the Senate and elsewhere, to take our country back to its higher self. I still believe in the core values and worthiness of that guy, too.

with the fight for democracy. John Kerry had me as a supporter many, many years ago--back in 1972, as a matter of fact--when he spoke at an event and held the room with his passion and quiet clarity.

I am much less involved with this race. I am waiting to see who can survive the process, which is either more brutal than ever before, or else I just know so much more earlier in than before. Once that happenes, I will support whomever, gladly and despite their limitations.

I also switched from being for whichever Democrat the party nominates, even if I had problems considering the nominee to have the character needed to be a truely good leader. In 2004 and since, the thing that surprised me about that "tall scrappy dog" is that the more you saw of him, the more you learned, the deeper you dug, the better he looked. Where most politicians had an attractive vaneer, what lay beneath was less noble, less inspiring - the opposite was true here.

And tall scrappy dogs from Massachusetts are the best of the best.

But he's from California:




Right up there in my top 1% of tall scrappy dogs... Also fond of the kind from MA. :-)


How's by you, OC?

Dog. Beyond. easy sight of the highway because I'm on my way out the door this instant to take that dog from your property and bring it home.

What a beauty of an animal.

I really do like dogs and that one looks like a wonderful creature indeed.

Pet that dog for me and go for a long walk on a blue and windy day.

Agree with you on those Bay State dogs, too. Just a hell of a fine breed.

Rare, though.
____________
All's well here. I hope your autumn is a great one so far and getting better.

He's a looker alright. As is the gent from MA.

Both fine specimens indeed.

the first part. But I don't know the second.

It ought to be the summary material for a David Lynch screenplay, though.

from me to WildEyedLiberal. Two summers ago, as we were preparing to leave for our Boston gig, I was making a joke about the proximity of the giant Citgo sign, and how close it was to our apt. - we could see if from WEL's bedroom window if we craned our necks just right.

The joke was a reference to how the sign might serve as a romantic backdrop if any funny business occurred in her room.

while -- good spirits tend to seek alignment and all boats are lifted.

Plus, for both of you, we're talkin' cosmically inspired political choices.

A red rose to ya both from this midwestern curmudgeonly gentleman.

:hug:

And has since the dark hours of the Nixon years.

Almost 4 decades of intelligent public service and long-range vision with an eye toward realizing the highest goals a nation is capable of.

I love your post.

...too, which is why I continue as a volunteer. Like you, ralbertson, my political support started with Kerry as nominee. Like you, I remembered the 1970's John Kerry, and began to learn about his work in the Senate and before. The post below was to karynnj (hi, karynnj:hi:)...but it explains why I am still here:


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
karynnj's words: "The anger and hatred on both sides is scary. It took a long time and a lot of work to heel the rift of the 1960/1970 period and as we found out in 2004, it takes almost no effort to re-open those wounds".

My response: This is one of the (many) reasons going into Iraq was so wrong...and why it made me so angry.

I remember what the emotions of Viet Nam did to my dad and my brother during that time. And our family wasn't alone. ALL that work to rebuild the country, friendships, and family rifts took YEARS...and in some cases, healing never came. To cavalierly cause a situation like that for the country again...and to DELIBERATELY use it and make it worse politically (as Rove, Bush and the Republicans did) is nearly an act of treason.

The country desperately needs to be united again...but I think we have to 'lance' this wound, once and for all. That's why I've long felt Kerry is the one to do it...and as President he could have.

This anger...and the attacks against John Kerry personally...flare up (I think) because the issue of his love of country remains out there since the 70's...no matter what the truth, and no matter what he has done since in good works (and he's done a lot).

The story about the taser incident is the perfect example: Kerry values, defends and fights for free speech and the right to dissent as important to our democracy. But yet he is attacked as being against the very things he fights for. In the 70's, John Kerry stood up for truth about the war in Viet Nam and as a Senator, fought to heal the wounds of that war and for support for our veterans. But yet, in 2004 and beyond, those good works are more than ignored...he is attacked as if they never happened.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, he's a great boss...and would have been a great President. He is the one person who could get us past those old divisions, left by the wounds of Viet Nam to heal and unite our country. His patriotism and integrity would provide an example to our children...and the world. And the amazing thing is, even though he is not in the White House, he is continuing the fight for our country anyway.

t is such a privilege to be here.




:patriot:

just because you can.

The only thing I want broken is the grip that the fascists have on this country.

Then the nominee can decide to go all out (Bill Clinton), or
keep him/herself in check (Al Gore, John Kerry).

I'm for the all-out tactic. Keep your mouth shut, and the Republicans
will fill it for you with their words.

Somehow, I don't think Hillary will stand for being swiftboated any more
than any of the others would. If Wes Clark is the VP nimonee, I promise you,
there will be no quarter from him for any such crap.

One way or the other, be prepared for some straight talk from the Democratic
nominees this time that will show McCain's "Straight Talk Express" to be a
"Double-Talk Local" with a flat tire by comparison.

Come now, this is the Democratic Party -- you know well what will happen, only there will be a lot more Republicans as wingnuts, so the humor factor will be only surpassed by the outrage.

Making sure everybody is registered, making sure folks work the polls, give to lower level candidates. Keep an eye out for Repub dirty tricks-and I predict the entire toy box of them will be dumped on whoever we nominate-which is one reason why I want Gore-he's squeaky clean and vetted by runs and time. A second choice would be Hillary-already vetted but I fear the sexism out there may create opportunities.

We want a Democratic world, not just President. When all we had was Clinton, while things were good, there was no staying power after him. If we had had Congress as well as Bill, there would have been Universal Health Care, no impeachment, and a President Gore. Yes, having Congress is that important. Not to mention the Supreme Court balance.

Don't forget Dem Governors and Senators. Less likelihood of Voter Suppression and Repression, more concern about children and seniors and folks who need help on the local level.

I agree that Gore was squeaky clean - but no more than John Kerry. If the candidate is clean, they will make stuff up. Even if the candidate has baggage - which I think the Clintons have, though others disagree - they will not limit themselves to that.

As I pile through the multiple Dem bashing threads on DU,it's good to know so many still have the fire in the gut to go out there and get our Dems elected!

We begin acting civil to one another again (for the most part), and save the 'fascist/authoritarian' labels for actual fascists and authoritarians, is my guess...

Quite nice and genuinely welcome.

Do you think the hostility will end with the convention? It will keep going on, and divide us, so that whichever snot rag the Republicans finally choose will have an easy win. Even if they didn't cheat.

And here's a prediction; at the Democratic convention, there will be a protest outside the hall, or a demonstration inside the hall, from the Florida delegates whose votes have been made worthless. It will probably get as much airplay from the MSM as the "police riot" at the 1968 convention, and it will have the same effect: a black mark on the Democratic Party and a big win for the Republicans in Florida.