Jump to content

Democratic Underground

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 24.53.120.97 (talk) at 16:41, 20 September 2005. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

DU logo
DU logo

Democratic Underground, or simply DU to its members, is a liberal/progressive online community established on January 20, 2001, the day President George W. Bush took office. DU rules state: "Democratic Underground is an online community for Democrats and other progressives. Members are expected to be generally supportive of progressive ideals, and to support Democratic candidates for political office."

Since its inception, over 76,000 forum accounts have been created with over 50,000 still remaining active. Almost 18 million messages have been posted. Membership and participation are free, 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.

Bernard Weiner and Ernest Partridge of The Crisis Papers[1] 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 for to issue complaint after complaint, 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."

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.

Member avatars

Registered members can select an avatar that will be displayed along with each of their 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.

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 US politics in many ways. Sometimes DUers in different parts of the country meet at DU gatherings in certain cities. DUers have also been known to 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 G. Roberts, Jr., 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:

Notable members

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

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 Chicago), handle the articles and technical issues, respectively.

Criticism

As with any politically charged website, there are many charges made against Democratic Underground from the political Left and the Right and the Middle.

From the middle

Any criticism of a site Administrator or a Moderator, or their actions, will likely result in the unilateral "banning" of that member without prior notice, explanation or response to later inquiries regarding the taking of such action. While progressive, democratic principles are promoted by those who visit and post there, the administrative policy implemented by the site owner is not in keeping with the traditional democratic ideals of promoting free speech, due process, and appeal rights . As a private site, implementation of administrative policies which include preemptive deletion of posts, and unilateral "banning" of member posters without explanation, are legal. However, it is questionable if the posts allowed to appear at this site represent a fair cross-section of the opinions held by all registered participating members.


From the left

Critics of the site allege that the site administrators and moderators are biased against, and 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. Some critics are affiliated with the People for Change forums, which were founded by Howard Dean supporters who felt alienated from Democratic Underground during the contentious primary season; many of these posters had been banned or were later banned from the Democratic Underground forums.

These people claim that DU is not truly liberal or progressive, but rather centrist. In particular, many members claim that the moderators of the Israel-Palestinian forums enforce an anti-Palestinian bias or adhere too strongly to the politics of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

A recent internal poll showed 14% of DUers would vote for John McCain if he ran against Hillary Clinton while 33% would vote for Hugo Chavez. Democratic Underground has also been accused of banning pro-Hillary Clinton posters, thus in opposition to views of many Democrats.

From the right

Conservatives/right-wingers often criticize Democratic Underground for removing comments and banning users who don't fit the site's left-wing stance. Supporters of Democratic Underground respond that the site is clear about its orientation, in contrast to some conservative websites, such as Lucianne.com, which claim to be open to all views but purge disagreeing posts.

Because most of the site's forums can be posted-to by anyone who has registered at the site, outlandish postings by some members are occasionally held up as an example of what the forum's membership believes as a whole. One example of this was the dialog about the 2004 tsunami disaster, in which a few posts suggested some conspiracy at work; while the threads were eventually locked and publicly disavowed by the site's administrators, the postings in question were reported by The New York Times and Fox News.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Democratic_Underground&oldid=23605910"