MyDD
Encyclopedia
MyDD is a collaborative
politically progressive American politics
blog
. It was established by Jerome Armstrong
in 2001. Its name was originally short for "My Due Diligence
." 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." All of the authors of the blog, who currently include Armstrong, Jonathan Singer
, Josh Orton, Charles Lemos, Nathan Empsall, and pseudonym authors desmoinesdemocrat, Senate Guru, Texas Nate, and Jason support the Democratic Party
.
learned of Meetup through Armstrong and MyDD. 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."
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".
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.
"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."
Other notable bloggers on MyDD that went on to work with campaigns include Matt Stoller with Jon Corzine
, Scott Shields
with Bob Menendez, Tim Tagaris with Ned Lamont
and Sherrod Brown
, Melissa Ryan with Russ Feingold
and Todd Beeton with Kirsten Gillibrand
.
The site garnered a great deal of attention during the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election when Jerome Armstrong
was the first source to break the exit poll
s at 1:58 PM EST.
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. The magazine credits MyDD with being "the first major liberal blog."
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" 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 Republican
incumbent
s.
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). "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 and also brought MoveOn
on board with their own page promoting the campaign.
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. 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. Local news sources were preferred over national news. The chosen list included mainly such sources, but also some Wikipedia
pages. 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 although the right had used the same tactic against John Kerry
in the 2004 election
. 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." 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. 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.
Collaborative blog
A collaborative blog is a type of weblog in which posts are written and published by more than one author. The majority of high profile collaborative blogs are based around a single uniting theme, such as politics or technology....
politically progressive American politics
Politics of the United States
The United States is a federal constitutional republic, in which the President of the United States , Congress, and judiciary share powers reserved to the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.The executive branch is headed by the President...
blog
Political blog
A political blog is a common type of blog that comments on politics. In liberal democracies the right to criticize the government without interference is considered an important element of free speech...
. It was established by Jerome Armstrong
Jerome Armstrong
Jerome Armstrong is an American political strategist and blogger. He is credited as one of the architects of Howard Dean's '04 grassroots Presidential campaign, and one of the leading web strategists in the world...
in 2001. Its name was originally short for "My Due Diligence
Due diligence
"Due diligence" is a term used for a number of concepts involving either an investigation of a business or person prior to signing a contract, or an act with a certain standard of care. It can be a legal obligation, but the term will more commonly apply to voluntary investigations...
." In January 2006, the name was changed to "My Direct Democracy" as part of a site redesign, with the new tagline "Direct Democracy
Direct democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
for People-Powered
People Power
People Power names:* the Philippine People Power Revolution* political parties in several countries, see People Power Party...
Politics." All of the authors of the blog, who currently include Armstrong, Jonathan Singer
Jonathan Singer
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".Singer is perhaps best known for his various interviews with prominent politicians, first...
, Josh Orton, Charles Lemos, Nathan Empsall, and pseudonym authors desmoinesdemocrat, Senate Guru, Texas Nate, and Jason support the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
.
History
The first Dean grassroots web site was created at MyDD in April 2002. In early 2003, Joe TrippiJoe Trippi
Joe Trippi is a long-time American Democratic campaign worker and consultant. A mainstay in presidential politics, Trippi has worked on the presidential campaigns of Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Dick Gephardt, Jerry Brown and most recently John Edwards...
learned of Meetup through Armstrong and MyDD. Armstrong shut down MyDD in 2003 to work on Howard Dean
Howard Dean
Howard Brush Dean III is an American politician and physician from Vermont. He served six terms as the 79th Governor of Vermont and ran unsuccessfully for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. He was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009. Although his U.S...
's presidential campaign. After lying dormant for a year, MyDD was re-launched with the Scoop
Scoop (software)
Scoop is a content management system originally developed by Rusty Foster. Scoop's focus is on collaborative publishing, and its feature set is geared toward encouraging user contributions and participation. Scoop is written in Perl and runs via mod_perl on Apache web servers with a MySQL database...
blogging platform in March 2004, with blogger Chris Bowers
Chris Bowers
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...
. MyDD was instrumental in online campaigning and organizing of grassroots action to elect Howard Dean as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee
Democratic National Committee
The Democratic National Committee is the principal organization governing the United States Democratic Party on a day to day basis. While it is responsible for overseeing the process of writing a platform every four years, the DNC's central focus is on campaign and political activity in support...
in January, 2005, with "the pro-Dean site MyDD.com, which served as a key clearinghouse of information about the race."
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
Daily Kos
Daily Kos is an American political blog that publishes news and opinions from a progressive point of view. It functions as a discussion forum and group blog for a variety of netroots activists, whose efforts are primarily directed toward influencing and strengthening the Democratic Party...
, began commenting on MyDD before starting his own blog in May 2002, and refers to Armstrong as his "blogfather".
Armstrong attended the California State Democratic convention in Sacramento in March, 2003 with Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos
Daily Kos
Daily Kos is an American political blog that publishes news and opinions from a progressive point of view. It functions as a discussion forum and group blog for a variety of netroots activists, whose efforts are primarily directed toward influencing and strengthening the Democratic Party...
.
Mathew Gross, creator of the blog on Howard Dean's website, was another contributor to MyDD. Joe Trippi
Joe Trippi
Joe Trippi is a long-time American Democratic campaign worker and consultant. A mainstay in presidential politics, Trippi has worked on the presidential campaigns of Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Dick Gephardt, Jerry Brown and most recently John Edwards...
, former campaign manager for Howard Dean, met and hired Gross based on Gross' involvement with MyDD.
"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."
Other notable bloggers on MyDD that went on to work with campaigns include Matt Stoller with Jon Corzine
Jon Corzine
Jon Stevens Corzine is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and of MF Global, and a one time American politician, who served as the 54th Governor of New Jersey from 2006 to 2010. A Democrat, Corzine served five years of a six-year U.S. Senate term representing New Jersey before being elected Governor...
, Scott Shields
Scott Shields (activist)
Scott Shields is an American blogger and Democratic Party political activist. Born in Englewood, New Jersey in 1978, he grew up in Morris County, NJ and graduated from Montville Township High School...
with Bob Menendez, Tim Tagaris with Ned Lamont
Ned Lamont
Edward Miner "Ned" Lamont, Jr. is a businessman and heir and most recently an unsuccessful candidate for the 2010 Democratic nomination for Governor of Connecticut. On May 22, 2010, Lamont received more than fifteen percent of the vote at the state Democratic convention, and appeared on the...
and Sherrod Brown
Sherrod Brown
Sherrod Campbell Brown is the senior United States Senator from Ohio and a member of the Democratic Party. Before his election to the U.S. Senate, he was a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Ohio's 13th congressional district from 1993 to 2007...
, Melissa Ryan with Russ Feingold
Russ Feingold
Russell Dana "Russ" Feingold is an American politician from the U.S. state of Wisconsin. He served as a Democratic party member of the U.S. Senate from 1993 to 2011. From 1983 to 1993, Feingold was a Wisconsin State Senator representing the 27th District.He is a recipient of the John F...
and Todd Beeton with Kirsten Gillibrand
Kirsten Gillibrand
Kirsten Elizabeth Rutnik Gillibrand is an attorney and the junior United States Senator from the state of New York and a member of the Democratic Party...
.
The site garnered a great deal of attention during the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election when Jerome Armstrong
Jerome Armstrong
Jerome Armstrong is an American political strategist and blogger. He is credited as one of the architects of Howard Dean's '04 grassroots Presidential campaign, and one of the leading web strategists in the world...
was the first source to break the exit poll
Exit poll
An election exit poll is a poll of voters taken immediately after they have exited the polling stations. Unlike an opinion poll, which asks whom the voter plans to vote for or some similar formulation, an exit poll asks whom the voter actually voted for. A similar poll conducted before actual...
s at 1:58 PM EST.
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
Daily Kos
Daily Kos is an American political blog that publishes news and opinions from a progressive point of view. It functions as a discussion forum and group blog for a variety of netroots activists, whose efforts are primarily directed toward influencing and strengthening the Democratic Party...
, and Swing State Project to raise funds for Democratic candidates and draw national attention to local races. The magazine credits MyDD with being "the first major liberal blog."
During the 2006 midterm elections, MyDD's Chris Bowers
Chris Bowers
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...
launched two campaigns in October 2006 on MyDD.com before the 2006 congressional elections. The first was the "Use it or Lose it" to prompt safe
Safe seat
A safe seat is a seat in a legislative body which is regarded as fully secured, either by a certain political party, the incumbent representative personally or a combination of both...
Democrats to give 30 percent of their campaign funds to other Democratic causes; the second was a Google bomb
Google bomb
The terms Google bomb and Googlewashing refer to practices, such as creating large numbers of links, that cause a web page to have a high ranking for searches on unrelated or off topic keyword phrases, often for comical or satirical purposes...
campaign to raise the site listings for negative news articles on a set of Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
incumbent
Incumbent
The incumbent, in politics, is the existing holder of a political office. This term is usually used in reference to elections, in which races can often be defined as being between an incumbent and non-incumbent. For example, in the 2004 United States presidential election, George W...
s.
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
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is the Democratic Hill committee for the United States House of Representatives, working to elect Democrats to that body. They play a critical role in recruiting candidates, raising funds, and organizing races in districts that are expected to yield...
or directly to Democrats in competitive congressional races (subject to FEC
Federal Election Commission
The Federal Election Commission is an independent regulatory agency that was founded in 1975 by the United States Congress to regulate the campaign finance legislation in the United States. It was created in a provision of the 1975 amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act...
limits). "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 and also brought MoveOn
MoveOn
MoveOn is an American non-profit, progressive or liberal public policy advocacy group and political action committee, which has raised millions of dollars for candidates it identifies as "moderates" or "progressives" in the United States. It was formed in 1998 in response to the impeachment of...
on board with their own page promoting the campaign.
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. The idea was to reach less-informed voters who might use Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
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. Local news sources were preferred over national news. The chosen list included mainly such sources, but also some Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
pages. 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 although the right had used the same tactic against John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
in the 2004 election
United States presidential election, 2004
The United States presidential election of 2004 was the United States' 55th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004. Republican Party candidate and incumbent President George W. Bush defeated Democratic Party candidate John Kerry, the then-junior U.S. Senator...
. In June 2007, front-pagers Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers
Chris Bowers
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...
left MyDD to found a new political blog, OpenLeft
OpenLeft
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...
, which went online on July 9, 2007.
Founder Jerome Armstrong
Jerome Armstrong
Jerome Armstrong is an American political strategist and blogger. He is credited as one of the architects of Howard Dean's '04 grassroots Presidential campaign, and one of the leading web strategists in the world...
was known in the blogosphere for his criticisms of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
. "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." 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
Jonathan Singer
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".Singer is perhaps best known for his various interviews with prominent politicians, first...
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. Peter Jukes
Peter Jukes
Peter Jukes is a British author, screenwriter, playwright, literary critic and blogger.-Television:Jukes' television writing has mainly been in genre of prime time thrillers or TV detective fiction, with 90 minute or two hour long stories originally broadcast on the BBC, retransmitted abroad in the...
, 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.
External links
- MyDD
- Exit poll posting
- "Blogging Down the Money Trail". Campaigns and ElectionsCampaigns and ElectionsCampaigns & Elections is a "how-to" journal of politics, focused on the tools, tactics and techniques of the political consulting profession....
. October/November, 2005. 19. http://www.campaignline.com/printedition/page.cfm?pageid=726&navid=50