Extremely Offline: Peter Daou and Nomiki Konst on the Divided Democratic Party

The Backchannel

During the 2016 Democratic primaries, political strategist Peter Daou was one of Hillary Clinton’s most vocal and prominent boosters, especially on social media. In addition to his relentless advocacy on Twitter, Peter was the co-founder of “Hillary Men,” a website that purported to serve as a “safe space” for male feminists who supported Hillary Clinton — and, by implication, to fend off her sexist rivals in the Bernie camp. To Clinton supporters, Daou was a diehard on the front lines of the digital battlefield of the 2016 race. To Sanders supporters, he was a walking caricature of the movement behind Hillary: zealous, earnest to a fault, and bent on weaponizing identity to attack Clinton’s political opponents.

Nomiki Konst was on the opposite side of that battle. Nomi was, and is, a fierce Bernie Sanders supporter, regularly appearing on cable news shows to make the case for his “political revolution.” Since then, she has worked for The Young Turks and was a candidate for the office of New York City Public Advocate.

Back in 2016, Nomi and Peter routinely mixed it up on Twitter. But a rare thing happened last year: Peter changed his mind. As he recently wrote in The Nation, he is now convinced that the threat of a Trump re-election is too grave to risk on the squabbles and rivalries from 2016 that continue to divide the Democratic Party. He is now counseling his fellow Clinton supporters that it is time to abandon their grievances and to prepare to unite behind whoever emerges at the front of the pack — even if it’s their hated rival, Bernie Sanders, a candidate Daou has even come to admire. Social media being what it is, of course, Daou has been greeted with invective and contempt by many of his erstwhile followers.

This is the first time Nomi and Peter have ever spoken to each other directly, outside of the social media platforms that have come to define our politics. We’re excited to host this discussion, because this is exactly what we set up our podcast to do: to take these performative online beefs and turn them into real conversations.