Who pays attention to DU?

Does anyone in the Democratic party pay attention to what we post here? I wonder. Do you think anything we write influences choices made elsewhere?

who posted here just before the election that, don't worry, Kerry knows what he's doing, just wait for it, blah, blah, blah...

Was he a freeper pulling chains, or what?

Cept Elizabeth Edwards and Chris Heinz I've never seen anything. Maybe it's because we're actually sticking to our beliefs instead of becoming the Republican's left wing outpost.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

I don't know if she still is.

"middle class was the engine of our economy" and we needed to take care of the middle class if we expected the economy to pull out of this malaise.

At the next debate, Edwards used that phrase in making that same argument.

I like to pretend that EE read it here and told him to use it.

It was great.

I hope she visits here and posts again soon. Maybe we should email her. let her know we miss her and invite her to drop in.

They hear us when we all call or email at once. That is our strength, I think, as a waystation for information and an organizing place for activism.

we are any politico's - worth their salt - wet-dream.

cheaper than polls, and SMARTER, too... all in real time and 0 clumsy wires for reading thoughts :evilgrin:

:hi:

peace

I have seen several times where we discussed something or used certain buzzwords and later heard them used by candidates (on another site during the primaries). I don't doubt that their researchers, usually students or interns pick up ideas from blogs/forums.

Press Secretaries have research teams that puruse the newspapers and blogs to keep a read on what's going on and what's being said about their candidate/politician. They track the media and blogs/forums have become part of the "people's media."

I'm not suggesting that read every post, but grad students/interns glance over blogs just as journalists do. DU is one of the biggest sites for Dems. I doubt they take the time to check on smaller sites though.

that I get my news on a couple of forums first, then on a couple of news aggregation sites, my local public radio station third, and I pretty much stop there.

I used to catch the news on CNN from time to time at my gym, and I used to actually laugh so hard I had to get off the stairmaster at the gyrations they took to try and sugarcoat the news. People looked at me like I was nuts, but every once in a while, somebody would come up to me and acknowledge that the TV is not the best source for your news.

Usually, those people had a book with them. Any kind of book. I don't think it was important what kind of book, but it wasn't a TV they got their background from.

The Internet is the new media for the populist. I think it's us. The ones posting on DU. We're actually making headlines on major news media. The fact that they ridicule DU is evidence that they need to counter the influence of this new medium of information exchange.

I ONLY listen to the new progressive radio in my car - I love it. NO more MSM for me at all - it's just such a joke - I get annoyed with people who quote from that crap any more. I'm converting people every day!!!

In one of the Gannon threads earlier today, I posted a suggestion that the WH press office and the WH press corps restore the traditional reporter and affiliation identification. This was common practice in press conferences I remember by Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

This is due to:
1. The WH transcript not identifying those asking questions (id is "Q").
2. Non-journalists, such as Gannon, are accessing "gaggles" and press conferences, often on day pases.

I said "if it's good enough for Helen Thomas, it's good enough for Jeff Gannon.

Let's see if this "eagle sores".

I LAUGHED HYSTERICALLY when I first saw Joe say, "we've got Joementum" and throw his fist in the air. WHAT a freakin' nerd.

But this Bush kiss takes the cake.

turn up in the evening news.

:scared:

You're sittin' there in your office, dispatching your reporters hither
and yon, to fill your daily/weekly edition, and always on the lookout
for something that has "grab", interest and might get some good kudos
for your department. You've already heard all your reporter's ideas
and are bored stiff with everyone you've met... ... so where do you go
to get intrigue, something different, new?

DU of course. I've seen DU show up thinly veiled in every newspaper
printed in english including all the british ones as well. The economist
might has well have printed a thread or two in some stories last year.

I laugh. :-) They're bored out there, ticking the clock away at their
desk, can't surf the porn websites, email's all read, and the jokes are
all old. We live in a new mediocrity where all news is so digested
its no longer interesting. Editorial pages are less interesting than
what i read here, 9 times out of 10. THe writers are not writing
because the're on fire... rather the've got to punch the clock and
seldom do they pull the same level as the DU writers. I credit the
guardian for the most concerted effort to keep its writing up to snuff,
monbiot, madelline bunting.. and some of them are really heroic.. and
the times writers, anatole kaletsky and some of their invitation
pieces make good ground... THe FT's kay and their invitation peices,
but it seems, as nobody can challenge and ask questions, that
newspapers are "flat"... and rather DU is alive.

None of the newspapers except pravda allow bloggers to go after each
part of the printed version, 1 thread per article-like, as they know
the instant they do it, some maverick like sweetheart, will log in
and re-write every article better. :-) Then they'll be embarassed,
so they hide behind their names and their officiality.

However, we do have a few friends we've found across the nation and we've even encountered strangers on the road. And yes, DU is being paid attention to. Now, feel better yet? DU is one of the top 10 boards on the net IMHO, but maybe I'm just biased.

He even managed to have one of his posts yanked.

You can quote it ;)

...oddly, it was a DU'er with whom his only previous exchange was very friendly.

I know that former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and others from the intelligence community lurk here. He told me so last October. So much for the "tin-foil" labeling we see around here as well as the coordinated attacks at times.

There are always distinctions. We are the leading edge here, this is a cool community to learn from and work with. We are a web resource.

A ton of very interesting and influential people are here, many of them posting from time to time under assumed names. They're watching. I know it for a fact.