What Happened to the People’s Think Tank?
by Thomas Brock - May 14th, 2008.Filed under: 2008 Elections, Activism, Bloggers, Democrats, Politics, United States Senate.
It’s been hard for me to stay active at BlueNC the last few months, but it’s become apparent that I’ve missed something.
Lou (a Friend of Charles Darwin and mine, I hope) posted about recent events that have caused him to pull away from NC’s premier progressive online community and that’s when I really took notice.
Says Lou:
Sadly, it appears that asking a candidate how she will vote on a piece of legislation is verboten. It’s more of the same, “Shut up and sit down over in the closet until after the election - then we’ll talk” nonsense. One needn’t be gay to be mortally offended by such an attitude. I sure as hell am.
What happened was that Linda repeated a series of questions from Pam (who has her own House Blend) to NC State Senator (and now Democratic candidate for Senator Elizabeth Dole’s seat) Kay Hagan. State Senator Hagan had been given ample opportunity to answer these questions and ducked or completely ignored them.
What resulted was a confusing argument about when and where it’s appropriate to question candidates. The overall sense I got from some of these comments was “She’s the candidate. Don’t question the candidate. Support the candidate.”
I’m disheartened, disappointed, and disturbed by the results of whatever has happened. It appears that the same disease that caused me to turn away from Daily Kos has infected BlueNC.
As I said over at Lou’s place, it’s sad and a damned shame.
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May 14th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I am indeed, Thomas.
Whatever cancer is eating BlueNC seems to be spreading, as another poster has been all but ushered into the street.
I don’t know what’s suddenly up over there, but it’s terribly disappointing.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Thank you, Lou. I appreciate it. And in today’s world, one can never have too many friends…
I have seen (thanks to your link) the newest episode of “shout’em down” politics.
It’s possible that some folks have forgotten that we’re all on the same team, but that doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to question our elected representatives and the folks that want to be.