On Rebuilding Party Unity -- Your Input Needed!

I was reading dsharma's diary that says, in a nutshell, that it's looking like Obama is going to win, and we Obama supporters need to start looking toward party unity and lay off flaming Clinton.

It was a wake-up call for me. And after thinking about it for a while, I decided to write this diary, to try to take dsharma's call one step further.

Before I go on, I'd like to say something to any Clinton supporters who may be reading:

I am going to proceed in this diary as though Obama has, for all intents and purposes, won the primary.  I am not doing this out of arrogance, or because I believe that there is no possibility of a Clinton victory. I could preface every sentence with "assuming, of course, that Obama wins" in order to express my recognition that some uncertainty remains.

But that would make for a largely unreadable diary, because the meat of what I'm saying would get all clogged up with disclaimers.  So I am going to just state my assumption upfront, acknowledging that it is an assumption and not ironclad fact.  I hope this will make it possible for you to see past my assumption to the main ideas I'm trying to express.

OK, back to the core content.

What I am hoping to do is collect some ideas here as to additional, more constructive steps we can take to foster re-unification, beyond the passive step of refraining from nasty posts.  In other words, how can we be unifiers, not just non-dividers?  (Kind of like the difference between "blessed are the peacemakers" and "blessed are the peace-wishers.")

I would really like to hear from BOTH Obama supporters and Clinton supporters.

Obama supporters:  What ideas do you have for how to reach out to Hillary's supporters to try to build real bridges, not just solicit their vote for Obama?  What can we say to them?  What is the best way to say it?  What are some possible pitfalls to avoid?  And what are the most important things you want Hillary's supporters to understand about you and your perspective, that you think will help to bridge the gap?

Clinton supporters:  What are your deepest grievances right now?  Not just (or even mainly) against Obama, but against us, his supporters?  What have we done and said that has infuriated you, disgusted you, hurt you?  What would you need from us in order to feel that we can all work together toward a common purpose?  Is it too early to begin a dialogue?

A few thoughts have been floating around in my mind as I've mulled over this diary topic, and maybe they will be relevant:  

Dsharma mentions that Clinton's supporters will experience grief at the loss of something that was very precious to them.  I went through a divorce a few years ago, after a long-term marriage.  I experienced some pretty debilitating grief for quite a while.  During that time, and subsequently through my leadership work in a divorce support group, I've learned a lot about grief.  

One thing I learned, or rather was reminded of, was the five stages of grief, as articulated most famously by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  (Although Dr. Kubler-Ross later added a sixth stage called "Reaching Out" -- she saw that looking beyond oneself to the needs of others was  really the final step in the healing process.)

The second thing I learned was not something I read in a book, but something I realized on my own, and which has been confirmed for me by seeing so many other people go through the grief process. I learned that the old saying, "Time heals all wounds" is a lie.  It wasn't time that healed my wounds, it was what I did with the time.  To get past the grief, I had to re-frame the way I was viewing my situation, and find new purpose and meaning in the circumstances of my life.  That took time, and it took getting a lot of good information, and it took a lot of reflecting on that information to figure out how to apply it in my life.

People who don't find a way to do that are the ones who, ten years later, are still stting at the bar, crying into their beer and complaining to anyone who'll listen about what that b****/b****** did to them, how s/he ruined their lives.  Or they start new relationships, without ever getting to the bottom of what went wrong in the old one and healing from its wounds, and they wonder why they can't seem to make the new relationships work either.  The grief doesn't disappear, it just goes underground and affects the griever in other ways.

The coming months offer so much possibility for Democrats.  I don't want to see "unresolved grief," or the hostility that has developed between different groups, destroy those possibilities, destroy the hope that was so universal among all Democrats just a few short months ago.

Please post any thoughts you have.  Let's be unity-makers.