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Hasn't virtually every single Democratic politician condemned the shooting? The only exception I can think of is Ilhan Omar, that's a pretty big condemnation from the power structure of the other side. I agree the reaction in places like Bluesly is... concerning. But all the blue tribe leaders are saying the right things Bernie and AOC included.
Politicians aren't really leaders, anymore.
See: 2020. Politicians were terrified of pissing off their uncontrolled constituents.
Outside of politicians, Jacobin published an article against calling for violence, at least.
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A personal perspective: Elected Democratic politicians are not quite the same thing as Leftist Influencers, but I don't run into very many Democrat politicians in my day-to-day, but I DO encounter Leftists repeating leftist-influencer lines, in real life, and I've been in real interpersonal conflicts where the other party being Leftist puts me in jeopardy as a straight white male who refuses to do leftist call->response.
For example, when a Black "Queer" Marxist tried to harass and terrorize his roommates into giving him the lease to their living space, and then attacked me with an axe when he failed, all the local leftists were strangely silent, when they're usually very judgemental of any incident of misbehavior. Almost like I was an acceptable target, regardless of what elected Democrat politicians would say on the subject.
To the point where I wonder if mutual acquaintances amongst themselves were saying things like "well that's what you get for being a white supremacist."
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At least on Twitter, AOC didn't say the right thing, though. She pretty openly used this as an opportunity to push her political agenda of gun control, which is pretty standard issue Democrat talking point whenever some major incident involving gun violence occurs. Which has sadly occurred so many times that it's become common knowledge that this sort of using of incident as vehicle sends a signal that you're a naked partisan operator trying to put on a face of common decency while actually in order to better push through your agenda.
I'd say Obama's a good example of someone who said mostly the right things on Twitter. Deserves at least a B, maybe even an A-. Beginning with the deflection about not knowing the shooter's motives isn't great, but it's still in the range of "fair enough, there's enough plausible deniability there." I would've rather if he was hyper-accountable and said "The likelihood that this shooter was motivated by violent rhetoric coming from Democrats and the left is a serious one we must consider and will compel some soul searching among us" or something like that. That'd be a somewhat costly (in terms of his stature among Democrats) signal that he really did condemn the murder rather than signal that he's a high status former politician who feels obligated to release statements about major incidents like this.
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You see a lot of people on the left (and right, moderates, whatever) who are personally terrified right now - they have a fear they are next. See: Hasan.
I think this greatly obscures how much they actually care or condemn.
What's going on with Hasan, is he legit terrified of right-wing reprisal attacks against leftwing commentators like him (something I think, unfortunately, is both highly rational and correct for him to feel right now)? I've never watched him and only encountered him passingly on clips and online-celebrity-interest articles and such, and most recently, I saw someone comment that Hasan watched the shooting on stream and that the few seconds after the shooting were the only times he thought Hassan genuinely looked like a real human instead of as his streamer persona. Since I want to avoid seeing the actual shooting (I've unfortunately encountered a freeze frame which was rather unpleasant), I didn't seek out the clip of him watching it, and I haven't heard what he had to say about the murder and its continuing aftermath.
From what little I know about him, I would've predicted standard issue deflection, but that's what I would've expected from his uncle Cenk Uygur, and his response turned out to be basically the best response from a leftwing figure that I've seen so far, at least on Twitter. And his followup tweets seem to double down on this, like opening with "I’ll work with anyone on the right to appeal to our better angels," something that's sure to be costly to him in terms of his leftist fanbase. What a bizarre, absurd situation it'd be if the Uygur-Piker cluster of leftists ends up being the saviors who actually bring credibility and legitimacy and decency to that side.
I'd hope he's learned a lesson or at least fear, and you're probably better at reading body language than I am, but Hasan specifically also has a pretty long history of pretty explicit calls to violence (cw: BakedAlaska link, also BA-grade legal analysis), and his career depends pretty heavily on not having a legal hammer or Senate nudge go after him. I have no idea what Twitch executive he's got compromising photos of, but given that the website is pretty notorious for banning game streamers who get too rough, there's gonna be some fallout on that sphere.
Hm, I could see the argument that Hassan is speaking in metaphor and hyperbole there, since he's talking about losing some Georgia election, which wouldn't have been prevented by literally gutting Republicans (well, you could gut enough of them before the vote to reduce their numbers beneath the Dem votes, but the 2nd order effects of that would likely prevent the results from being credible to the populace). I'd guess it's a case of Twitch admins following the "MUST I believe that Hassan is calling for violence? No, because I can come up with a plausible interpretation where he isn't" and "CAN I believe that [random non-leftist political streamer X] is calling for violence? Yes, because I can come up with a plausible interpretation where he is" method of partisan thinking.
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I saw Cenk's response which I thought was shockingly good. I don't really follow his community but I think he got in trouble with the left recently anyway for standard insufficient purity problems.
I heard something about Hasan being scheduled to debate Charlie soon which probably really really made it real in his mind.
He's a LARPer, realizing what he is saying is real life will shatter a lot of ego defenses.
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...why would being personally terrified obscure this thing? Is this some sort of an artificial standard where it's only "real" care or condemnation if they're floating on an abstract plane, free from any personal feeling? Of course their feelings related to their own personal security are going to affect whatever they're saying, they're human after all.
Consider:
Or.
Given for instance, Hasan's interests and platforms he seems entirely pro political shooting if the victim is "zionist" enough for him, but obviously he would not like to be on someone else's list.
Depending on if it is 1 or 2 you may get different private statements, different behaviors going forward, and different policy decisions about what to do on this.
I want people to condemn the shooting because political violence is bad, not because they could be the next victim.
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Again their caucus shouted down an attempt for a moment of prayer. That was their visceral reaction. Sure people like AOC had a more polished answer after the fact (though used it to support apparently complete gun control). But…I think it’s bullshit.
They had just had a moment of silence and the moment of prayer was a kind of silly suggestion that was opposed. No one opposed the moment of silence.
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It's a good start, but "Blue Tribe leadership" and "Democratic politicians" don't overlap that significantly. The attitude towards the Red Tribe needs to change in all major Blue Tribe institutions: academia, education, journalism, media. When that happens it will become somewhat believable that we rank somewhere above "cockroach" in the Blue Tribe hierarchy.
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