W/UPDATE: Bernie Fans' Overreach Triggers Massive Kossack Backlash

Will my click-bait works? We will soon know… I’m usually pretty bad at baiting. But no, this is not a click-bait diary. There is some substantial news to share here.

Remember the Daily Kos Primary Straw Poll floated by Markos a few days ago? It was the first straw poll since real-life voting had started. I haven’t seen anyone following up on the results. Please allow me the honor of sharing the latest 3 straw-poll results with you:

Date

[ dramatic silence ]

Before I continue, a disclaimer: I’m among the 2-3% who are still undecided in this primary, and that’s what I voted in each straw poll. So this is not personally about me. I literally have no horse in this race. Now… to business.

The straw-poll vote counts indicate gradually-increasing interest in the primaries. Nothing fishy there. This seems like a real site trend. 

There was also nothing earth-shattering happening with the campaigns since January that would justify this mass trend in Clinton’s favor. Rather, it has been Sanders exceeding expectations thus far, and consistently clawing away at Clinton’s lead. According to pollster.com, Bernie has gained 10% over Hillary nationally, over the same 6 weeks in which he's lost some 25% here among Kossacks.

What’s going on? I’ll tell you what I think is going on. You guys (ok, also some gals) — the ones who pen those awful Hillary-demonization diaries, and the hundreds and hundreds who catapult them to the reclist, or as it should be renamed temporarily, the Reek List — you guys just make us sick to our stomachs.

My own caucus is 4 weeks away. It is highly unlikely that I’ll caucus for Hillary there. My personal deal-breaker is her terrible right-wing positions on Israel-Palestine. But you know what? 4 more weeks of ridiculous Hillary-demonizing Reek List here, and I might give in.

Pleading to your better nature has accomplished bupkis.

Satire — and really good one — mainly helps us vent a little, but only gets about half as many recs as any plain vanilla “Hillary’s a Monster” diary, not to mention an anti-DWS special issue. 

So perhaps this will help? You are demonstrably hurting your own candidate. And you manage to do it among the largest most loyal progressive Democratic base community, people who overall are closer to Bernie than to Hillary in their worldview.

Now, a special message to those compulsive Bernie campaign diarists. You are the Daily Kos version of Citizens United, combined with the Nigerian Princess spammers.

Once upon a time, there was a site-wide restriction of 1 diary per day. It was removed, and the floodgates have opened for people to abuse this. It took a while, but now it’s happened. All you need is a couple hundred idiots who automatically uprate, and Voila! At least 3 of your diaries are on the Reek List every day.

What’s a reasonable scenario for 3 diaries by the same author to hit reclist on the same day? Perhaps an ongoing disaster or war situation, from which you provide unique and up-to-date citizen journalism reports, or valuable expert analysis.

But here, since January, we have a couple of people achieving this amazing feat every day. Every freakin’ day. With content-free diaries, which are — again —  the Daily Kos equivalent of a right-wing SuperPAC’s 30-second TV attack ad.

When I mentioned my dislike of the Reek List situation, Bernie folks here explained it away as “well, it’s only a few hundred out of the huge site community”. Wrong. At any given time, there are only a few thousand tops who actively uprate diaries. So from among those, a few hundred is a sizable chunk. 

Frankly, we don’t know who these people are. How can we be sure that the Bernie campaign, both on this site and in real life, is not performance-enhanced by hateful Trump-Lite constituencies, many of whom have temporarily made it into Daily Kos as well? We certainly cannot tell the difference by they type of garbage that’s written and promoted here lately.

And if we start suspecting that, what do you think we will do? Yes. Hold our noses and vote for Hillary in the primaries. Because a substantially flawed, yet genuine Democrat, is still better than an unwitting Trojan horse who has allowed his campaign to be thoroughly contaminated with hate.

Yes, there are offenders on the Hillary side too, but they have neither started this arms race nor are dominating it. And there are far, far fewer Bernie-demonizing diaries than Hillary-demonizing diaries.

You might knee-jerk again: “Of course, it’s because there’s nothing in Bernie to demonize, he’s a decent person.”  Precisely. Bernie is as decent as politicians come. In case you haven’t noticed, he is disgusted by your actions. You are hurting him. You are hurting the site.

Please stop. Just stop.

If you’re not sure how else to support the Progressive Revolution with all your newly-found free time, then how about joining a voter-registration effort, or finding progressive candidates for a local race that’s still lacking one?

Last but not least, to site admins: it might not be a bad idea to reinstate the 1-diary-per-day limit (or maybe 2) until primary season is over. It is clear that the site’s dependable immune system is failing us right now.

Thank you. Fire away.

Well, we’ve got some discussions going, and some reality-denial. This site claiming to be a reality-based community, let me help you weed it out.

In the comments below, one of the diarists I implicitly addressed above, took some serious Umbridge at my critique of his work. In his words,

I've had two diaries on the rec list this week. Both were fact-based looks at the inconsistencies in the Clinton record….   

...People are changing their minds because I am pointing out things the media aren't. I don't hate Hillary and I deplore the sexism she's faced. But the fact is…

...If it's considered hateful or divisive to deal in facts and analysis of those facts, I can't help that.

Hallo Spaceboy. Without divulging your username here, let us consider together the list of your 10 most recent diaries, omitting none.

Oh, it’s soooo good you’ve come along, because people and “the media” just don’t know any of the bad stuff about Hillary. I have no idea under what rock you’ve been hiding since 1992, but thank you for helping me explain my point.

But the lack of minimal self-awareness is quite troubling. We’re not used to seeing it on our side of the political map.

The people in the comments can lecture me all they want about “Shouldn’t conclude about the candidate from the fans” etc. etc., but my warning light is beeping like crazy. If that’s what warning lights do.

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