Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Obama Comments on the Neck Stomping

President Barack Obama met with a group of Demo-bloggers today, and commented on the assault of a Moveon.org member by a Rand Paul supporter. From Huffington Post:

Well, look, I think that one of the things that I've always tried to promote is civility in politics. I think we can disagree vigorously without being disagreeable. And what we saw on the video was an example of people's passions just getting out of hand in ways that are disturbing.

In fairness, I don't expect every candidate to be responsible for every single supporter's actions, but I do think that all of us have an obligation to set a tone where we say the other side is -- may be wrong but it's not evil, because when you start going down that path of demonizing folks, then these kinds of incidents are more likely to occur. And my expectation in the remainder of this campaign is that all candidates out there are a little more careful about making sure that they're framing the debate around issues and sending a clear message to their supporters that our democracy works when we disagree, we debate, we argue, it gets contentious, but that there are certain lines we don't cross.

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