Barack Obama

Meaning that sniping—complaining verbally— creates worse candidates than if no one had sniped. I still cannot see how verbal complaints do that.

Your response was lengthy, but in the end it didn't show what practical, real-world, detrimental effect complaining has. For example, if people on this board really were complaining that "the ACA was going to kill us all"—to such an extent that you called it common wisdom on DU—then what was the real-world effect of that? What actually happened?

If you are saying that politically-involved people complaining about their party on a political board depresses general voter turnout, I'm sorry, that's hooey. That's an unsupported supposition. The real actual things that DO affect elections are the GOP tactics you acknowledge—throwing red meat to their base, constantly devising real-life ways of discouraging minorities & the young from voting—not to mention their gradual and very nearly complete annexing of the media.

The GOP gives its base what it wants. Democrats have Sister Souljah moments and call their base retards and insult liberals by calling them ignorant on trade policy. Oh, but we shouldn't complain.