The Super Tuesday results, and DU policy going forward [View all]

Hi everyone,

This is really a pro forma announcement, because we have an uncontested presidential primary this year, and so we have not had to make a big deal about DU's election year policies. Many of you already know what these are, but for those who don't, allow me to quickly recap.

DU has two different policies for what we consider "Primary Season" and what we consider "General Election Season." During Primary Season members are permitted significant leeway to criticize Democrats that are running for president, whereas during General Election Season members must support the Democratic presidential nominee.

We do this because we feel strongly that during years with competitive presidential primaries, once a nominee is decided upon, continuing to re-hash the primary campaign is pointless, and a potential entry point for trolls to sow unnecessary discord.

There is no fixed date when DU switches from Primary Season to General Election Season -- it very much depends on the state of the race, and whether the primaries are competitive or not.

Technically, DU has been recently operating under Primary Season policies, although since Joe Biden has no serious opposition, it has of course not been necessary for us to fire up a special primaries forum and go through that whole process. However, following yesterday's results, and the fact that Joe Biden will obviously be the Democratic nominee, General Election Season is essentially already in effect, so we might as well make the official call now.

To be clear, it's not against the rules to provide constructive criticism of the Biden campaign going forward, it just can't be done from the perspective of "my candidate is/would have been a better choice." So ultimately what I'm telling you right now is really going to change very little, since pretty much everyone here is already on board with Joe. It's mostly about semantics this year -- for example, Omaha Steve can now switch his fundraising thread titles from "unofficial" to "official" now that a number of primaries have been decided, and as far as I'm concerned that goes for the presidential primaries too.

That's why this isn't exactly a major announcement -- I just wanted to bring it up in case anyone was wondering how we were going to handle it this year. Next time around, we will of course have a competitive presidential primary, so we'll be bringing back the special primaries forum setup that we ran in 2020. But this year there's no need, since it's a foregone conclusion.

(FWIW, Democrats other than President Biden who are still running in competitive primaries are not yet considered "official" candidates until they win their elections.)

Thanks for reading!

EarlG