alt Hacker News> You can say a dozen things morally condemning Trump and the Republican Party and then make one strategic criticism of the Democrats, and they'll look at you like maybe they can't ever trust you anymore.
I think some of this is a consequence of a decade or so of bad faith "wolf in sheep's clothing" online discourse.
I remember way back before Trump's first term, before GamerGate, before the alt-right when people would "joke" about racist and neonazi stuff on 4chan and elsewhere. It was framed as "We're just kidding around because it's fun to be edgy. It's ironic. Obviously, we're not really racist neonazis." People, mostly teens, took the bait and thought it was all in good fun but over time those ideas sunk in and actually stuck.
The next thing you know, we've got white supremacists parading in broad daylight.
If you poke around the dark (and these days not so dark) corners of the Internet, you can literally find people with toxic fringe beliefs discussing how to subtlely soften up their targets with seemingly innocent "just asking questions" when the ultimate goal is to (1) obscure which tribe they are actually a member of and (2) persuade people over to their tribe without them realizing it.
When you're in an environment where people like that do actually exist and participate in discourse, it's reasonable to wonder if the person you're talking to really does share your beliefs or not.
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How are those two situations remotely similar? A criticism of the Democratic Party should not be seen as a morally reprehensible "joke" that you have to walk back like "ha ha, just kidding, I would never criticize the party."
The idea that the Democratic Party is a flawed, mundane institution full of fallible people who make mistakes is not a toxic idea that we need to keep out of the discourse lest it "sink in and actually stick." It's more like medicine that the party is trying to administer to itself with one hand while the other hand tries to bat it away.
In an environment where smart people pretend to be stupid for fun, actually stupid people will show up thinking they're in good company. As more of these people arrive the original ones begin to leave as it's no longer a joke for many of the people in the environment.