I've been looking at the amount of time I spend reading this website and responding to posts, and I now realize it's quite substantial. Probably a good 3-4 hours a day.
This is becoming a substantial waste of my time, and the problem is I'm addicted.
So I have to cut this off.
So I felt I ought to write a proper Goodbye Cruel World diary.
I have to say, I think the chances of Democrats making incredible gains in elections over the next several years are as good as they have ever been. We have good leadership in place with Hary Reid, and I think Howard Dean is working out as a good DNC chair. I think we've made some good progress in understanding that every little complaint by Republicans isn't reason to turn tail, but rather to understand that they're complaining cause it's working.
That being said, I still am concerned, and I'm not certain that this site is actually helping.
First, I guess the news articles on the front page I think are missing some substance. I appreciate it when I see things about Montana politics and other states. Pointing out things that some Democrat somewhere is doing which is good. But too many of the front page diaries are prone to beltway crap like DLC bashing and such that isn't important and nobody really cares about outside of DC.
There's also the problem of many commentators on this site simply don't spend much time listening. Some may accuse me of that, but you know when I cam to this site I had some very different ideas than I do now. It has opened me up to a different understanding of some of the politics, especially of the need for pushing a hyperbolic agenda just to be heard.
But that only goes so far, and some of the anti-war, anti-corporate stuff here is unhelpful. The reality is to be a majority party you have to look out for the good of the entire nation, and that means economic growth, which means corporations. As Tsongas said we can't hate corporations and claim to love jobs.
I've made it a point to try to explain that what we dislike are corporations which are leaches upon the society. Companies which don't follow the rules. Why? Because these companies end up hurting the ones who do play by the rules. That's how you need to talk about it, because people don't respond well when you're attacking them, but if you give them a way to feel like you're attacking in defense of them... then they like part of the crowd.
Anyway, I see now Josh Marshall is going to open up a similar site, and I'm curious to see where that goes. I think it'll be good.
So that's all for now. I am interested in attending that dKos convention next year and correct Armando on his obviously wrong ideas.