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Revision as of 11:16, 13 April 2006

Democratic Underground, also known as DU, describes itself as an "online community for Democrats and other progressives." According to its web page, its membership is restricted by policy to those who are "generally supportive of progressive ideals," and who "support Democratic candidates for political office." . However, the scope of discussion is wide and members represent a broad spectrum of liberal beliefs and backgrounds. DU was established on January 20, 2001, the day President George W. Bush was inaugurated.

Since its inception, over 82,000 forum accounts have been created with over 50,000 still remaining active. Almost 20 million messages have been posted. There is no cost for membership and participation, although voluntary donations are solicited, and some services are available only to donating members. DU publishes articles six days a week and has an online store, a directory of links, and forums where logged-in members may post on various topics of interest.

Features of Democratic Underground

Columns

DU has several regular columns, and on any given day may have a number of guest columns sent in from contributors.

• Mondays: Top Ten Conservative Idiots, a rundown of the most outrageous right-wing activities in the past week, according to the DU administrators.
• Wednesdays: The Plaid Adder writes her column.
• Thursdays: Ask Auntie Pinko, an 'advice' column.
• Fridays: Equal Time with Bob Boudelang, a satirical column supposedly written by a Republican Team Leader.
• Occasionally, DU will feature a Hate Mailbag of hate mail.

Bernard Weiner and Ernest Partridge of The Crisis Papers are frequent guests.

Forums

The DU Forums are a highly active scene for political discussions by "Democrats and other progressives". To maintain the desired atmosphere in the forums, the administrators will sometimes "tombstone" (ban) users for violating site policies, such as these:

We ban conservative disruptors who are opposed to the broad goals of this website. If you think overall that George W. Bush is doing a swell job, or if you wish to see Republicans win, or if you are generally supportive of conservative ideals, please do not register to post, as you will likely be banned.

Do not publicly accuse another member of this message board of being a disruptor, conservative, Republican, FReeper, or troll, or do not otherwise imply they are not welcome on Democratic Underground. If you think someone is a disruptor, click the "Alert" link below their post to let the moderators know.

Have a thick skin. Please be aware that just because you consider a post to be offensive does not mean that it is against the rules or bigoted. As a general rule of thumb, posts about ideas are generally okay, but posts about groups of people are often inappropriate.

The main forums on DU have been re-arranged since the close of the 2004 US election season. They now include:

• Latest Breaking News
• Editorials and Other Articles
• General Discussion
• General Discussion: Politics (superseding "General Discussion: Campaign 2004")
• The Lounge (for general non-political discussion)

Other forums include:

• Individual forums for the discussion of state and local issues.
• Individual forums for the discussion of certain political topics such as education, homeland security, and guns.
• Individual forums for the discussion of certain relatively non-political topics such as books, science, and sports.
• "Group" forums where chartered groups of users may discuss topics of mutual interest such as hobbies, fan clubs, and potential 2008 presidential candidates.

An "Ask the Administrators" forum was maintained until April 26, 2005; this forum allowed users to pose questions to the board administrators. This forum has now been shut down by the administrators, who felt that the forum was being used as a medium for people to issue complaints, with the nature of their complaints being inflammatory. A "Rules" page, a "Frequently Asked Questions" page, and a "Contact the Administrators" page showing the email addresses of the administrators have been substituted.

Two of the most controversial forums are often scenes of hot debate between posters:

• The Justice/Public Safety board, used for discussing gun issues and commonly referred to as the "Gun Dungeon" or "Gungeon"; and
• The Israel-Palestinian affairs board, sometimes referred to as the "Basement."

Influencing polls

Media websites (including newspapers, television networks, and America Online) run occasional "polls" that do not use the sampling methods of formal opinion polls, but instead invite everyone to respond. Some DU forum messages, usually captioned "DU this poll", urge DU members to vote 'en masse' in these polls. The goal is to influence polls to reflect the aggregrate votes of DU members. After voting, members report back to thread, usually simply writing "Done" or "Done and kicked" ("kicked" meaning the message thread is being moved to the top of the forum page by the new message so that other members will see it).

This sort of poll manipulation is not unique to Democratic Underground and is employed by many other activist websites of all political stripes.

Member avatars

Registered members can select an avatar that will be displayed along with each of their forum postings. For donating members, this avatar can be a custom image that they have supplied; non-donating members can choose from a set of standard images that include popular symbols, images of political figures or popular culture figures, and state outlines, state flags, and a few national flags. These avatars allow users to show some of their personality with each posting.

After the 2004 election, many members displayed an upside-down American flag as their avatar; an inverted flag is an international symbol of distress.

An online community

Some prolific members have posted more than 1,000 times (the point at which their posts stop displaying the exact total). Through frequent contact in the forums (including special topic groups) and online private messages, members come to know one another. Discussions range beyond politics to include such diverse subjects as pets, pet peeves, and pop culture. Occasionally, members organize face-to-face get-togethers.

Like other communities, DU has its in-jokes. New members are often confused by DU vocabulary, usually referencing pop culture ("this thread needs more cowbell") and deficient spelling skills of conservative trolls (such as "cazy," "moran," and "noble jesters").

Campaign Underground

DU has an online campaign headquarters named "Campaign Underground." The site, which was put together with help from DU members, features a database of information about campaigns, voting trends, and media. A "media blaster" feature provides the ability to email local media outlets in many U.S. cities. Eventually DU hopes to have other features, such as integrated local news from the forums, a local event calendar, and other issues specific to states and locals.

Demopedia

On December 7, 2004, DU launched the beta version of Demopedia, a wiki based collaborative project aimed at presenting the Democratic and progressive opinion and outlook, and at collating and preserving some of the information generated on the forums. During the beta, only users who had registered at DU before December 7 were able to contribute. It uses the MediaWiki software.

Ideology

Although DU restricts its postings to people on the political left, members have many internal disagreements over a wide range of issues, as well as disagreements over tactics of opposition to the Bush Administration. Nearly all members oppose the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but some DU members favor only a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, while other members favor an immediate and total pullout. Some members favor the death penalty, while a majority do not. Another such issue is gun politics; DU participants include supporters and opponents of further restrictions on gun ownership.

While supporters of Ralph Nader are a distinct minority at DU, many posts criticize the Democratic Party from the left. Democrats such as Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein, who are more inclined toward compromise and conciliation with the Bush Administration, are regularly attacked at DU, while Democrats such as John Conyers and Barbara Boxer, who favor a more confrontational approach, are more highly regarded.

Activism

DUers are active in U.S. politics in many ways. Many of them attend political protests and rallies, volunteer for campaigns, and write letters to editors of newspapers and members of Congress.

Activist Corps

One of the newest ways in which DUers are involved is called the DU Activist Corps. Founded on July 1, 2005, the Activist Corps is a group of over 1,000 DUers who are committed to taking action on a certain issue whenever an official Activist Corps activity is posted.

The first Activist Corps action was posted on July 12; members wrote letters to the editors of local newspapers regarding Karl Rove's role in the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name. More than 70 letters were published in newspapers throughout the country. Other Corps activities have included signing onlinepetitions to U.S. Senators asking them to reject Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, and to write letters of support Cindy Sheehan.

Political candidates

Some DUers have run for, and have even been elected to, political offices as high as Congress. Examples of these include:

• Herb Riede, the Mayor of McSherrystown, Pennsylvania;
• Monica McGlocklin, a three-term former member of the Maine House of Representatives;
• Elizabeth Rogers, Congressman J.D. Hayworth's opponent in the 2004 election;
• Jeff Seemann, Congressman Ralph Regula's opponent in the 2004 election; (In an ironic twist, during his campaign, Seemann was banned from DU as a disruptor even though he was the Democratic Party's candidate for his Congressional district.)
• Justin Sowa, Congressman Paul Ryan's potential opponent in the 2006 election; and
• The late Andy Stephenson, a voting-reform activist who ran against Sam Reed for Washington Secretary of State in 2004.
• Carl Sheeler who is running for the Democratic Nomination to run for the US Senate from Rhode Island in 2006.

Notable members

Several notable figures have posted in the forums at some point. Among those who have been verified as not being hoaxes are:

• Wes Clark, Jr., the son of Wesley Clark;
• John Conyers, member of the House of Representatives from Michigan;
• Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of John Edwards;
• Christopher Heinz, a son of Teresa Heinz Kerry;
• William Rivers Pitt, liberal activist, author, and former managing editor of Truthout.org.

Owners

The website is owned by Democratic Underground, LLC (a limited liability company), which is in turn owned by David Allen of Washington, D.C. He goes by the username "Skinner" while on the boards and handles most of the issues relating to the forums. The other two administrators, "EarlG" (of Washington, D.C.) and "elad" (of Portland, OR), handle the articles and technical issues, respectively.

Criticism

This article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed.

Democratic Underground has been criticized for censorship directed against both the political left and the right. From the left, critics have alleged that administrators and moderators unfairly ban ("tombstone") or censor posters who consider themselves to be to the political left of John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee for the US presidency, and claim that DU is not truly liberal or progressive, but rather centrist, and adheres too strongly to the politics of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). One group of these critics were affiliated with the People for Change forums founded by Howard Dean supporters who felt alienated from Democratic Underground during the contentious primary season, and many of them had been banned or were later banned from the Democratic Underground forums. Other DU members claim that the moderators of the Israel-Palestinian forums enforce an anti-Palestinian bias. DU also generally bans any mention of the Conservative Underground, which DU members instead refer to as "the site that shall not be named".

The administrators have directed the moderators to remove any attempts by members to discuss the site on the site and this is routinely done, occasionally resulting in the banning of members. Controversy has also arisen over allegations that the owners of Democratic Underground often favor their largest cash contributors during debates in the message forums. Critics point to the dominance of several member block constituencies that appear to wield undue influence on the direction DU's moderators take in resolving member disputes.

Others, often conservatives or supporters of right-wing politics, have criticized Democratic Underground for removing comments and banning users who don't conform to the site's political stance. They charge that there is irony in standing for progressive and liberal ideals while enforcing limitations on ideological diversity and freedom of speech. Defenders of Democratic Underground respond that it is valuable for progressives to have a site for internal discussions, based on shared values.

Another forum was started in fall 2005 called Progressive Independent, a community of Left-leaning Progressives who hold Democratic Party politicians as accountable as Republican politicians. Its members are mostly progressive and independent, though there are many who are still affiliated with the Democratic Party. It broke away in protest of what they claim, is DU's ideological tilt towards the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group that seeks to move the party right. Progressive Independent has a membership fast approaching 800 members including Progessive heros like Stan Goff and Joe Pageant. Democratic Underground has forbidden all mention of PI on their forum because many of their best and brightest members migrated over there.

Citing outlandish comments

Outlandish comments sometimes appear at Democratic Underground, and have been cited by critics. One example of this was the dialog about the 2004 tsunami disaster, in which a few posts suggested some conspiracy at work. Although some posts were deleted and the threads were locked, the mere occurrence of the posts was reported by The New York Times and Fox News. The DU administrators officially disavowed what they called "kooky tsunami conspiracy theories". They added, "One wonders why the author did not spend five minutes over at Free Republic and instead write an article about how conservatives think the tsunami was some sort of retribution from God, or how Muslims deserved it."

See also

• Fitzmas

External links

• Democratic Underground Homepage
• DU Forums
• DU Demopedia
• Campaign Underground
• Best/Worst Of DU - conservative watch group
• DUmmie FUnnies - conservative satire of DU

• Internet forums
• Political websites
• Politics and technology
• 2001 establishments
• Electronic advocacy
• Alternative journalism