Speaking of Angry Primaries

So I haven't mentioned it yet, but my candidate for County Council did well enough in the primary to make it into the general election. I hesitate to say he "won" because he came in third, but then in this sort of race the top three get in, so that's good enough. Our success was colored, however, by some shenanigans by one of the other Democratic candidates. The leading vote-getter (J) encouraged his/her supporters not to vote for any other candidate, thus depressing the vote share of my candidate (G) and another candidate (W). Since G and W were the likely 2nd choices of J's voters, it turned out that they both came fairly close to losing.

Now I'm sure you can imagine my reaction when I found out about this. In fact, in select party circles it is now referred to as "The Conniption." It's a big scandal and everybody is very upset, and some people are out for revenge. After some consideration, I decided that I won't be one of those out for retribution. With some difficulty, I've chosen to set my irritation aside and work with J's campaign anyway. If this crap happens again in the general election, we could very well lose seats on the Council, and I don't want that to happen. Hopefully J has been shamed enough to cease this nonsense. (Of course, if I find out it happens AGAIN, there will definitely be an accounting)

Why am I writing about this? Well, let's just say that I'm trying to practice what I preach. I've argued that Clinton supporters should accept the results and rally around the nominee for the good of the party - to let bygones be bygones. I really get how emotionally difficult that can be, and how satisfying it would be to lash out. But I'm not doing that, because the stakes are just too high for that kind of behavior. I don't intend this to be read in any lecturing tone - only one of sympathy. It really sucks when you feel like your candidate has been screwed (although in Clinton's case I think the problems were more media- than Obama- driven).