I'm hesitant to publish this.

On the one hand, although the genesis of C99 is at DKos and many or most of us found our way here from there, if C99 becomes just another in a dreary series of places to vent about the foibles and mismanagement of DKos, Caucus99 can never succeed... or at any rate, never succeed in an interesting and politically valuable way.

On the other hand, it is only fucking yesterday we were piously instructed to tiptoe through the Hillary eggshells, so maybe just a bit more venting will be therapeutic. So...

An Open Letter to DKos Admin

Never say never I suppose, but it's hard to imagine what could draw me back to DKos now. Hope to see a few of you around Caucus99 from time to time. You'll be welcome.

Other than the obvious finger-on-the-scale bias of the March 15 deadline, yesterday's diary was remarkably clever and subtle by Markos' standards. It all seems so reasonable and inoffensive, little more really than a restatement of DKos first principles. Who can object to a prohibition on the citation of rightwing sources or the recital of rightwing anti-Clinton tropes? As always though, the devil is in the details. I think Kos' failure to define these terms in any useful way is no accident. We can all agree I hope that the uncritical use of Infowars or the Weekly Standard is out of bounds. What about citation of the Wall Street Journal though, a "respectable" but FAR more influential and dangerous rightwing rag? Brooklynbadboy and others gleefully weaponized the WSJ's bizarre, counterfactual, deliberately misleading hit-piece on the alleged cost of Sanders' health plan, to widespread accolades from the DKos Clintonistas. Is that still "acceptable" discourse? What about the use of the Washington Post, still coasting on its "liberal" reputation, despite its longstanding neocon slant? OK to use without caveats?

Or consider the notion of "rightwing tropes." A ban on the regurgitation of conservative attacks from the Bill Clinton presidency--Whitewater, Vince Foster and all the rest--is one thing. I see no way for a progressive to use that crap, nor any reason why we would even want to try. No one IS reciting that stuff though, other than an occasional, soon-banned troll, so warning against it is, while harmless, also pointless and redundant. I have no problem at all adding Benghazi to that list of attacks that ARE rightwing, and Benghazi IS sometimes used by "respectable" Kossacks, though not very often that I've seen. Prohibiting Benghazi attacks is fine as far as I'm concerned.

What about Clinton's emails though? It's one thing to argue that apparently no laws were broken, and that in any case the chances that Clinton or her close aides will be indicted before November are very small (although I'll note in passing that very small ≠ zero.) It doesn't follow though that any discussion of the emails or the private server is necessarily inappropriate on a Democratic site. My wife is a long-time, fairly high-level employee of the Federal EPA (she's in Flint as I write this) and no Clinton-basher. She is absolutely appalled at Clinton's use of a private server to conduct State Department business. In her well-informed view, this crossed bright and well-understood ethical boundaries; the greenest entry-level Fed knows better than to do something like this. Is it out of bounds on DKos to honestly discuss the fact that this sort of out-of-touch arrogance reflects poorly on Clinton's chances in the general election--even against Trump--and gives one profound worry as well about her conduct in office, especially regarding the use of military force, if she IS elected President?

Or consider the FBI investigation into the emails. It's one thing to insist that headlines screaming "Indictments Near!" or the like have no place on DKos or any site that hopes to be taken seriously. That's fine, and if it means that some users will have to bite their tongue, I don't care all that much. It hardly follows though that the investigation doesn't matter or shouldn't be talked about at all. My brother is a good "conventional" liberal and will vote for any Democrat over any Republican, but he's far too busy working two jobs and raising a family to have the leisure to give much thought to politics. He solidly supports Bernie, without knowing all that much about his policy proposals. What has filtered into his distracted perception is that there's just so much scandal surrounding both Clintons; he doesn't really suppose Hillary is "guilty" of breaking the law, but he fears she'll be a dangerously weakened candidate in November. As I've said before on DKos, it's Politics 101: Perception IS Reality. If my brother sees Hillary surrounded by scandal, having in no way sought out that information, so will a lot of other voters. In Kos' world, is it too defeatist even to discuss that?

Is demanding speech transcripts a trope used only by a fringe of Clinton-haters? If so, the New York Times is on that same fringe. Is any mention at all of Clinton's ties with Wall Street and the mega-banks an unacceptable guilt-by-association slur, as her ardent supporters would have it? Is any suggestion that her enormous payments for brief speeches might be an attempt to purchase access really a bannable CT, even though most of us would denounce those same payments, made to a Republican?

The apparent ban on the use of certain words--warmonger, neocon, neoliberal--in reference to Clinton is especially silly. No question, these terms and others like them are used too casually and too often, frequently by people with no real understanding of their meanings. They all are useful terms with actual definitions though, and they all can be applied to Clinton without being ridiculous. Why should those of us able to use such terms properly be dumbed-down to the level of those who throw them around as empty epithets?

Etc...

I don't think Markos' failure to spell out any of this is casual or an accident. I think it's a carefully-crafted policy. I think he's consciously giving Clintonistas the tools to shut down debate, even debate that seems permissible within the new dicta. It goes back to the failure of Community Moderation. These rules might not be quite as objectionable or completely impossible to work within, IF misinterpretations of them, deliberately or otherwise, were policed as aggressively and consistently as were violations. I think we all know how unlikely that is.

Solidarity,

Phil