This story about how the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is threatening to hold their breath until they turn even bluer if the Democrats don’t start taking them more seriously has been going around for the last day. I’m noting it mostly for these two lines:
“It’s not a question of who they’re going to support for president, they’re going to vote for Barack Obama. It’s a question of where their time and money is going to go,” spokesman T. Neil Sroka said.
[considering]
Schmucks. Amateurish, self-defeating schmucks.
A threat like that isn’t credible in increments. If you’ve given money and time to a candidate in the past, AND you make it clear that you’re still going to vote for that candidate, then you’re going to end up to rationalizing your reason to giving more money and time. And once you start giving money and time, it’s a short step to rationalizing matching your donations from the last cycle. That’s how it works: it’s like quitting smoking, in fact. The only reliable* way to do it is by going cold turkey and then being a Nicotine Nazi to all of your friends who are still indulging in your formerly bad habit. That means no money, no time, no vote, and being loud about all three.
If the PCCC wants its threats taken seriously, then the PCCC needs to make serious threats. They need to say “We’d rather let the Republicans win, then back off on this!” – and have people believe them. Until then… well. As I’ve said before, if you won’t even show some elementary self-respect then don’t expect me to respect you, either.
Moe Lane
*True, I’ve managed to quit smoking so far by using the patch and avoiding bars until they became smoke-free zones. But I’m a freak of nature; I also haven’t succumbed… yet. And it’s been almost a decade, too.
Odd. Your twitter button doesn’t want to work but your “ShareThis” button does work.
_
And yeah, I agree that was an empty threat from the PCCC.
Yup – that was the important lesson that at least some of the Republican leadership learned from the Tea Party candidates who won primaries only to lose elections. For the ones for whom winning is more important than any principles they suddenly have to factor in credible threats in the primaries.
It’s a visceral issue – no matter how disappointed they are in how they’re betrayed by Democratic politicians, there is just no way they will vote Republican; they CAN’T vote Republican, because if they did, they’d disable themselves like R. Giskard Reventlov.