General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDid D.U. get its start because of Bush v.Gore?
I know it's been around for quite awhile, but I always wondered about the "Underground" part.
TwilightZone
(25,471 posts)It was started the day W was inaugurated.
zanana1
(6,121 posts)It was an amazing discovery to find so many people who thought something was dreadfully wrong about those events.
Music Man
(1,184 posts)Found out what it was about, started an account, and it's been one of the best decisions I ever made. What a great community.
UpInArms
(51,284 posts)I have been here since February 2001 ...
It has been my refuge
JaneQPublic
(7,113 posts)Yep, after Dubya was coronated by a split SCOTUS decision and the media was obsessing over bogus stories that the Clinton staff removed all the "W"s from keyboards, DU was a haven for Dems who cared about truth and democracy.
Aristus
(66,379 posts)I was overjoyed that others felt the same way I did. I didn't feel alone anymore.
Hotler
(11,424 posts)it was like an oasis in the darkness. A place to come in out of the storm. Bush-Cheney still suck.
hlthe2b
(102,279 posts)dmr
(28,347 posts)I signed up that day and have been here multiple times a day, every day.
That installment day I was pacing the floors. Crying. I thought I was alone in my feelings. Why weren't other people as alarmed as I was with what had transpired.
DU gave me solace. I wasn't alone. Many, many, many other Americans, and around the world were just as upset as I was.
Those were the days. Nearly 19 years ago ... a lifetime ago. I haven't aged a bit, lol!
DU and DUers have changed my life. DU through its ups and downs has been my educator, my therapist, and has given me comic relief, amongst other things. I love my DU!
zanana1
(6,121 posts)It all started with Iraq because of Bush's WMD con. There probably wouldn 't have been a 9/11.
MH1
(17,600 posts)or Democratic Party and Republican Party.
And yet, with all this history, there are still idiots out there making that claim.
Drahthaardogs
(6,843 posts)A place of sanity back in the day.
RockCreek
(739 posts)I was stunned, upset, in disbelief from election night of 2000.
Never found others who had similar reactions in the way I have found here since 2017.
I was on Mudflats and Immoral Majority regularly in 2008 -2010. Th3 comments sections were wonderful support back then.
hamsterjill
(15,220 posts)I lurked beginning in 2001 and officially joined in 2004 when Kerry was running.
I was (and am) so grateful to know there were others like me!!!
CottonBear
(21,596 posts)Skinner, Earl G and Elad are the creators of DU. Skinner is the owner.
Turin_C3PO
(13,992 posts)I started lurking right away and then joined in April 2003 under a different username which Ive now forgotten. I took a break during the Obama years from 2010-2015 and then re-registered when the threat of Trump began. I love this website.
comradebillyboy
(10,148 posts)dweller
(23,634 posts)that's how i remember it anyway ... lurked a month or 2 and joined...
i remember reading those early threads on how it got started, the banner at
inaugural parade , wasn't there a video of eggs flying at the motorcade?
or was that a myth?
look how far we've come and why, and what fresh hell awaits us?
smfh
✌🏼
Jersey Devil
(9,874 posts)It was a refuge in the storm.
Mz Pip
(27,445 posts)Found a link on another site, Buzzflash maybe.
It was a small group and once you passed screening you could join the Underground, which was sort of the party basement of DU.
ProfessorGAC
(65,044 posts)A couple months after launch (I think) I heard Skinner being phone interviewed on CSPAN WJ.
Checked it out a couple days later and have been here since.
Doc_Technical
(3,526 posts)in FreeRepublic.com
I think that was around the time ENRON was doing power brownouts and
blackouts in California.
CottonBear
(21,596 posts)Seven Days Underground
Democratic Underground had its official launch on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2001. Much has happened since then. To mark the passing of our first week, we felt that our faithful visitors might like to read a SLIGHTLY EMBELLISHED first-person account of the highs and lows of launching an underground political website. by Skinner
DAY 1 (SAT) - A GIFT FROM MSNBC
On Friday night, we were up until about 3:00am getting ready for the website's big Inaugural Day Launch. We were hoping to be in bed by midnight, but our intern a young radical from one of the local community colleges spilled paint all over our banner at around 11:30, and we had to start from scratch. EarlG thought the intern was trying to sniff the stuff, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were true (he kept mumbling something about how "acrylic lasts longer than this latex crap", but we weren't clear on the context). The rest of us are too old for that sort of thing, but we'll keep him around because he is the only one here that knows anything about programming perl. (Fortunately, he got the "Nuclear Button" script working by 10:00pm, before the can of paint arrived.)
On Saturday, we met at our makeshift "office" in Northwest DC sometime around 11:00am. We were supposed to meet at 9:30, but the intern overslept. He showed up with his own homemade "George W. Ass" sign, but we wouldn't let him bring it to the protests Newshound thought it was "off message."
We got down to Pennsylvania avenue around noon, and were fortunate to claim a prime location right in front of the press bleachers. Protesters were confined to a few "designated protest areas," and it seemed strange to me that one of those spots would be right in front of the media. I guess the communications geniuses in the Bush camp didn't think of everything. The other protesters seemed to be a mishmash of left-wing types: Some dancing polar bears to protest oil drilling in ANWR; Some free-Mumia folks; Anti-death penalty activists; A pretty large contingent of Seattle-style anti-globalization college kids; and even a guy on stilts to protest, well, I don't know what he was protesting. Like us, lots of folks were protesting how Bush stole the election, but there were far fewer of us than I expected. A sizable chunk of the protesters I spoke with voted for Nader. I thought, if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be out here freezing my ass off in the rain. But I digress.
While ostensibly there to protest, our real motivation for attending the event was to get our banner on television. (We have no money, and this was the cheapest national advertising campaign we could come up with.) The banner was eight feet long by 3 feet tall, white canvas, with the words "DemocraticUnderground.com" painted in big, black letters. With luck, some Good Democrats would see it on TV and stop by our website, which at this point was sitting unused on a server somewhere in Atlanta (I think).
Sometime between noon and 1:00, EarlG's cell phone rang. His wife yelled into his ear: "Stop shaking the banner!" She, and about a million other people, were watching us on MSNBC. A preliminary count turned up exactly four messages on our discussion board. The first one: "Nice f------ discussion board. There's nobody here." By the end of the day, there would be nearly a thousand posts.
Eventually Dubya's limo drove by our part of the parade route. It was going so fast that the secret service guys were in a full sprint. We decided to pack it up and go back to the office. The intern stayed behind to get some more of "that quality doobidge from the polar bears."
Read the rest of the diary at link below:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/01/01/010127_7days.html
UpInArms
(51,284 posts)CottonBear
(21,596 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 14, 2020, 01:24 PM - Edit history (1)
DU is an amazing online community. Ive been fortunate to have met up with quite a few Georgia DUers over the years, including many who no longer post here.
Fun Fact: kskiska (who I believe is or was a Georgia DUer, was the first official DU member to post here! Many years ago, I asked who was the first poster and either Skinner or Earl G responded to my post with the answer!
Polybius
(15,421 posts)What would Democratic Primaries look like in 1984? Who would most people have picked? 1988? 1992? It really would be interesting to see.
secondwind
(16,903 posts)I remember this well.
gay texan
(2,450 posts)RIP
JaneQPublic
(7,113 posts)Also back then, Media Whores Online, plus a couple still around: Buzzflash, Smirking Chimp.
morillon
(1,185 posts)And I joined before the 2004 election. I don't post often, but I read DU every day without fail.
JCMach1
(27,559 posts)Saboburns
(2,807 posts)All those years ago.
I logged on 5 min after seeing it and have been here ever since.
Thank Dog.
Laxman
(2,419 posts)I saw a DemocraticUnderground.com bumper sticker on a car in 2001 and wrote it on my hand to remember when i got home. I didn't sign up until 2005 and I still think it took me a couple of months to start posting. Wow, I was just a kid...
UTUSN
(70,695 posts)trackfan
(3,650 posts)because a lot of us had names that related to Bush in some way, and we were given a chance to generalize and personalize our user names. My original user name was gwbsamoron
Demonaut
(8,917 posts)WyLoochka
(1,629 posts)Check in all the time to see what's up. Don't post much. But, this place helped keep me sane during the wubya years, and now again in the orange maniac years.