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MyDD was the first large collaborative politically progressive American politicsblog. It was established by Jerome Armstrong in 2001. Its name was originally short for "My Due Diligence."[1] In 2005, MyDD was profiled in Campaigns and Elections magazine, crediting the site with being "the first major liberal blog."[2] In January 2006, the name was changed to "My Direct Democracy" as part of a site redesign, with the new tagline "Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics."
The first Dean grassroots web site[3] was created at MyDD in April 2002.[4] In early 2003, Joe Trippi learned of Meetup through Armstrong and MyDD.[5] Armstrong shut down MyDD in 2003 to work on Howard Dean's presidential campaign. After lying dormant for a year, MyDD was re-launched with the Scoop blogging platform in March 2004, with blogger Chris Bowers. MyDD was instrumental in online campaigning and organizing of grassroots action to elect Howard Dean as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in January, 2005, with "the pro-Dean site MyDD.com, which served as a key clearinghouse of information about the race." [6]
Several early contributors to MyDD became prominent in politics on the Internet. Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the most-visited political blog in the world, Daily Kos, began commenting on MyDD before starting his own blog in May 2002, and refers to Armstrong as his "blogfather".[7]
Armstrong attended the California State Democratic convention in Sacramento in March, 2003 with Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos.
Mathew Gross, creator of the blog on Howard Dean's website, was another contributor to MyDD. Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean, met and hired Gross based on Gross' involvement with MyDD.[8] "One day, soon after we'd moved to a larger quarters in a South Burlington office park, I looked up to see this tall young guy with an earring and a nearly shaved head wandering around the office. Security had just grabbed him and was hauling him away when he yelled out to me: 'Wait! I blog on MyDD.com!' This was, of course, the political Web site where I'd first heard about Meetup.com. 'You're hired!' I yelled."[9]
MyDD was profiled in late 2005 as part of the article "Blogging Down the Money Trail" in Campaigns and Elections magazine. The article focused on the special election in Ohio's second congressional district and the ability of blogs like MyDD, Daily Kos, and Swing State Project to raise funds for Democratic candidates and draw national attention to local races.
During the 2006 midterm elections, MyDD's Chris Bowers launched two campaigns in October 2006 on MyDD.com before the 2006 congressional elections. The first was the "Use it or Lose it"[citation needed] to prompt safe Democrats to give 30 percent of their campaign funds to other Democratic causes; the second was a Google bomb campaign to raise the site listings for negative news articles on a set of Republicanincumbents.
The "Use It or Lose It" campaign called on bloggers and Democratic activists to pressure Democrats in safe seats to ask them to give at least 30 percent of their campaign accounts to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or directly to Democrats in competitive congressional races (subject to FEC limits).[13] "Safe" Democrats was defined as those who were either running unopposed by a Republican, or whose Republican opponent raised less than $10,000 (and thus were not considered serious opponents). The lists of such Democrats were pulled from FEC filings. The campaign drew media attention[14] and also brought MoveOn on board with their own page promoting the campaign.[15]
Almost immediately after starting the "Use it or Lose It" campaign, Bowers began a Googlebomb campaign to increase the search results of a set of negative articles about endangered Republican congressional incumbents.[16] The idea was to reach less-informed voters who might use Google to search for information on candidates, most often by simply entering the person's name. Taking advantage of the Google indexing algorithm, having many people link to these articles using the candidates' names, would raise their prominence in the search results.
The articles chosen were to be from non-partisan news sources, and factually negative about the chosen Republicans.[citation needed] Local news sources were preferred over national news.[citation needed] The chosen list included mainly such sources, but also some Wikipedia pages.[17] The candidates chosen were culled from an initial list (chosen by Bowers) of 70, down to 52. The candidates cut were those whom a suitably credible and negative article could not be found.
The concept drew criticism from conservative bloggers[18] although the right had used the same tactic against John Kerry in the 2004 election.[19][20] In June 2007, front-pagers Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers left MyDD to found a new political blog, OpenLeft, which went online on July 9, 2007.
Founder Jerome Armstrong was known in the blogosphere for his criticisms of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. "I was rooting that it would come down to Edwards and Clinton -- that to me represents a battle of Democratic values and ideas," said Armstrong. "Obama's candidacy is really just personality-driven, wrapped with quasi-religious overtures."[21] As a result, many of the supporters of rival candidate Hillary Clinton migrated to MyDD. However, MyDD was one of the few blogs to let bloggers from all the campaigns post on the front page. Longtime editor Jonathan Singer supported the Illinois Senator, and in June 2008, Josh Orton, the Netroots Nation political director and former Online Outreach director for Barack Obama, joined MyDD as a frontpage blogger.[22]Peter Jukes, aka "brit" on MyDD, wrote a post-cap of the Obama-Clinton primary war on MyDD, titled, "My Story: Flaming for Obama" in September, 2008 for Prospect Magazine which detailed the combative primary on MyDD.[23] The authors of the blog during this period included Armstrong, Jonathan Singer, Josh Orton, Charles Lemos, Nathan Empsall, Jason Williams, and pseudonym authors desmoinesdemocrat, Senate Guru, and Texas Nate.
MyDD has been largely dormant since 2010. Its founder, Jerome Armstrong explained that he “had to get out to save from becoming hardened, cynical, and without peace,” citing the negativity in American politics.[24]
Armstrong's last political post on the blog, from October 10, 2016, was entitled "A blowout of historical proportion" and predicted a crushing Clinton victory over Trump in the 2016 presidential election—one for "the record books". As of late 2019 the website is a generic product review site and no longer covers politics.
Related Research Articles
Daily Kos is a group blog and internet forum focused on the U.S. Democratic Party and progressive liberal American politics. The site publishes blog posts, polls, election and campaign fundraising data, and is considered an example of "netroots" activism.
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, often known by his username and former military nickname "Kos", is an American blogger who is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos, a blog focusing on liberal and Democratic Party politics in the United States. He co-founded SB Nation, a collection of sports blogs, which is now a part of Vox Media.
Netroots is a term coined in 2002 by Jerome Armstrong to describe political activism organized through blogs and other online media, including wikis and social network services. The word is a portmanteau of Internet and grassroots, reflecting the technological innovations that set netroots techniques apart from other forms of political participation. In the United States, the term is used mainly in left-leaning circles.
Chris Bowers is a blogger for DailyKos and a manager of their email list. He was a blogger and co-founder of OpenLeft, and was until July 2007 a front-page blogger for MyDD. His focus is on polling and data-driven analysis of US politics, as well as of the blogosphere.
Jerome Armstrong is an American political strategist. In 2001, he founded MyDD, a blog which covered politics, making him one of the first political bloggers. Armstrong coined the term netroots, and was referred to as "The Blogfather" for having mentored many other famous bloggers such as Markos Moulitsas in their early years. He is credited as one of the architects of Howard Dean's 2004 grassroots presidential campaign, and bringing those tactics to campaigns globally. In 2005, Armstrong co-founded Vox Media with Markos Moulitsas and Tyler Bleszinski.
Jonathan Hershel Singer is a progressive blogger. For five years, he was a writer for the progressive blog MyDD, which was credited by Campaigns and Elections magazine as being "the first major liberal blog".
Howard Brush Dean III is an American physician, author, consultant, and retired politician who served as the 79th governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003 and chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from 2005 to 2009. Dean was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election. Later, his implementation of the fifty-state strategy as head of the DNC is credited with the Democratic victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Afterward, he became a political commentator and consultant to McKenna Long & Aldridge, a law and lobbying firm.
Unity08 was an American political reform movement that sought to offer all voters an opportunity to directly engage in politics by ranking the most crucial issues facing the country, discussing them with the candidates and engaging in an online, secure vote to nominate a bipartisan alternative to the Democratic Party and Republican Party presidential tickets for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Founded in 2006, the group gained attention from various media outlets, with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter dubbing the group's efforts a kind of open source politics.
During the presidential election of the United States in 2004, Google bombs were used to further various political agendas. Two of the first were the "miserable failure" Google bomb linked to George W. Bush's White House biography and the "waffles" Google bomb linked to John Kerry's website.
Firedoglake was an American collaborative blog that described itself as a "leading progressive news site, online community, and action organization". Established by film producer Jane Hamsher in 2004, Firedoglake served as a platform for Hamsher, other writers and commenters to engage in debate and activism. Hamsher shut down Firedoglake on August 1, 2015, citing health reasons, and announced that all posts would be archived at the Shadowproof website, which was launched that year by former staff members. Shadowproof describes itself as "a press organization driven to expose systemic abuses of power in business and government while developing a model for independent journalism that supports a diverse range of young freelance writers and contributors."
The 2008 presidential campaign of John Edwards, former United States Senator from North Carolina and Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2004 began on December 28, 2006 when he announced his entry into the 2008 presidential election in the city of New Orleans near sites devastated by Hurricane Katrina. On January 30, 2008, Edwards returned to New Orleans to announce that he was suspending his campaign for the Presidency. On May 14, 2008, he endorsed Barack Obama at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
OpenLeft was a political blog founded July 9, 2007 by Matt Stoller, Chris Bowers, originally of MyDD, and Mike Lux, a former official in the White House under President Bill Clinton. Covering political and social issues from a progressive standpoint, it spearheaded a number of causes, including focusing attention and criticism on the Blue Dog Democrats and supporting net neutrality. The website's campaign garnered criticism from a number of Democrats, including Brian Baird.
The 2008 United States House of Representatives election in Alaska was held on November 4, 2008, to determine who will represent the state of Alaska in the United States House of Representatives. Alaska has one seat in the House, apportioned according to the 2000 United States census. Representatives are elected for two-year terms; whoever was elected would serve in the 111th Congress from January 4, 2009, until January 3, 2011. The election coincided with the nationwide presidential election. The primary election was held August 26, 2008.
John Aravosis is an American Democratic political consultant, journalist, civil rights advocate, and blogger. Aravosis, an attorney who lives in Washington D.C., is the founder and executive editor of AMERICAblog and The Aravosis Report.
The 2008 congressional elections in Washington was held on November 4, 2008 to determine who will represent the state of Washington in the United States House of Representatives. Representatives are elected for two-year terms; those elected will serve in the 111th Congress from January 4, 2009 until January 3, 2011. The election coincided with the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Nonpartisan blanket primary elections were held on August 19, 2008.
While the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging starts with several digital precursors to it. Before "blogging" became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical "corkboard". Some have likened blogging to the Mass-Observation project of the mid-20th century.
"People United Means Action" was a political action committee in the United States that opposed the Democratic Party leadership and the nomination of Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for President in the 2008 presidential election. PUMA began as an effort by supporters of Obama's primary rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who believed that Clinton should have been the Democratic nominee. According to PUMA, "We [were] protesting the 2008 Presidential election because we refuse to support a nominee who was selected by the leadership rather than elected by the voters."
The 2008 United States presidential election in Maine took place on November 4, 2008, and was part of the 2008 United States presidential election. Maine is one of two states in the U.S. that instead of all of the state's four electors of the Electoral College to vote based upon the statewide results of the voters, two of the individual electors vote based on their congressional district because Maine has two congressional districts. The other two electors vote based upon the statewide results. See below in the section of Electors for more information.
The 2018 United States Senate election in Nevada took place November 6, 2018, to elect one of two U.S. senators from Nevada. Democratic nominee Jacky Rosen defeated incumbent Dean Heller.
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