'Voices Of Reason Amidst The Derangement'

Post is here. I'm so glad I don't read Daily Kos anymore.

To say I'm disconcerted by today's obsession with the release of the Clintons' tax returns is an understatement. Does anyone else think the feeding frenzy is flat out embarrassing or is it my whole WASP uncomfortable talking about money thing? Is it news? Sure. Is it worth poring through? If you like. But the glee with which so-called Democrats at dailykos have launched "an investigation" into the Clintons' tax returns is most disturbing of all.

First there was the "mothership" diary which stated as its goal:

This is the diary to discuss the Clinton tax returns, which are scheduled to drop this morning.

We'll need to create teams to look through these tax returns, so please step up to volunteer to cover each year's tax return so we can find the information we need in those returns. As soon as I have the link to the returns available, I'll put it up here in this diary.

Also, please recommend this diary so it can be on the recommended list as an action item for Kossacks.

Then there was the "Breaking" diary announcing that the Clintons, damn them!, are rolling in it. Here are the diarist's accusations...err...observations:

That's a lot of money by anyone's standards. Is this the reason why she was holding out for so long- for fear that the fact they are very, very rich would hurt her image? Will it hurt her ability to connect with her poverty stricken constituents? Or was there something else that was she hiding?

What's with the timing? Obviously she knew that today was Dr. King's day. They released them 1 hour before the MLK march in Memphis and during the MLK rally. Take from that what you will...

Finally, it now seems much less significant that she loaned her campaign $5 million. She could've done that many times over!

Again, so much for hope and uplift, eh guys?

But my point here isn't to slam the Hillary haters of dailykos, although reading through the comments of the second diary made me want to take a shower, but rather to point out the voice of reason and sanity that lives in the community over yonder. There was almost a pitchforks and torches feel to some of the comments in the mothership diary, from Obama supporters at that. Here's just a sampling: . . .

I am not comfortable with this diary...because of the way it presents the valid task of examining a facet of a presidential candidate as a search-and-destroy mission. Nothing wrong with combing through this, it was done with Obama, and will be done with McCain (where are your returns anyway, McC?), but it's not a suitable subject for a live blog. There are other investigations done by this site to model this after that are much more appropriate to the task... this one just makes things look slimy.

So you are declaring them corrupt and they have to prove they are innocent?

With you 100%. I am becoming more and more disenchanted with both Obama's supporters (and I am one) and this site. This is petty gotcha politics at its worst. Count me very much out. . . .

And there were plenty more just like them. In addition, there was a diary called I'm embarrassed for us in which diarist kubla000 writes "today, dKos jumped the shark. and i'm embarrased for us" and, of course, this parody diary titled "LIVEBLOG MOTHERSHIP: CLINTON DENTAL RECORDS" that captured the absurdity of the anti-Clinton spectacle. As diarist drational put it:

Is the change we want to become like the GOP?

It's tempting sometimes to paint the dailykos community with a broad anti-Hillary brush, just as many like to paint MyDD as anti-Obama. The truth is much more complex than that as I was reminded by the comments of the diaries above. The blogosphere thrived on a sort of singleminded us against them mentality, whether it was Democrats vs. Republicans, outsiders vs. insiders or gate crashers vs. gate keepers; but now we have trained our sights on each other. So it was a relief to me to see that while some diarists persist in feeding the Obama vs. Clinton flames, as Angry Mouse wrote the other day, there is beginning to be a rebellion against it there, and I hope here as well.

I'll say again: I'm not anti-Obama and never have been. I'd vote for him in a heartbeat vs. McCain or any other Republican. I think he's got a great future ahead of him. I just think Hillary would make the better candidate this time around.