General Discussion

The Way Forward is essentially a placeholder for what will eventually become Primaries 2026. It won't be long after the mid-terms before the focus turns to the 2026 presidential primaries, and obviously those primaries are going to be wide open this time around on both sides of the aisle. Just as we have in previous years with contested Democratic presidential primaries, we will have a separate forum for those discussions, and people won't be allowed to post threads on that topic outside of the Primaries 2026 forum. But we are not there yet.

Once the Maine primary is officially called on Tuesday, DUers will not be able to undermine the ongoing campaign of the winning candidate. Until then everything is fair game (within the DU rules of course). To be honest, I think these past few weeks have been a fairly good reminder for DU members that contested primaries can get nasty, and people should be prepared to read criticisms they don't necessarily want to read. Of course, people also need to be prepared to move on once nominees have been chosen, with the overall goal of defeating Republicans. That's the way we've always done it on DU, and we're not changing things going forward.