Reply #20: I think for starters emphasize that we are "progressive agenda" and "democratic party" supporters... [View All]

... not so much "Obama supporters".

Yes, many of us strongly support Obama as the nominee, which arguably makes us an "Obama supporter". But speaking for myself, I'd switched from many people I wanted to run since I felt they were the right person to do so (Feingold, Gore, Edwards, and now Obama)... All of those people deserve my support, but not my unbridled "loyalty". I'm not just voting for them personally without knowing what they are going to do to make things right in our country. The most important thing is that we've fixed the mess that has been created over the last 20-30 years. Obama isn't the only person we're going to need to do that. He's the choice at this point to make this logical, and we should be loyal to help him to do this, but let's not make this like a football game where we have one team vs. the other team in terms of "supporters". Our goals are higher.

It always bugged me a little when I'd go into a thread and criticize what I thought was an obvious problem or flaw with Hillary's campaign, and then got labeled an "Obama supporter", when at the time I was actually almost neutral on supporting Obama, but I clearly wanted to point out a flaw in a campaign I thought was running counter to what I wanted as someone that wants to see the corporatocracy brought down and a sense of progressive values restored.

Let's say instead of us being "nice Obama supporters", that we're all nice and big tent Democratic Party supporters, and what many feel the Democratic Party should be in terms of progressive values. I would like to think that at some point "Hillary supporters" would rather be a group of the latter than to feel forced to surrender to become an "Obama supporter".