I was in my late-thirties, attending grad school at Porltland St U.

- What was your experience in computers/ the internet before launching
MyDD in 2001?

I was a day-trader, so I was online a lot; and following the fiasco that
selected Bush out of Florida in 2000 is what engaged my political efforts.

- The first race you blogged was the special election in VA-04 - any
reason, or was this just the first race to come down the pike after
starting the blog?

Yea, that was the first one down the pike after 2000.

- What was the mission of MyDD when you launched it?

Political coverage for the junkies that wanted to talk about campaigns and
elections year-round it what it evolved into. But during the summer of 2001,
it just was my own passion. At the time, there was no such thing as a
political blog really, and I just sorta wanted to keep track of what I was
saying. I was mostly involved in communities at Delphi and Salon, in their
forums with other political junkies, and the personal blog became a way to
take what I was posting on the forums, and put it together on my own. So I
tracked the 2001 elections that way, building up a readership with the blog
notes about the 2001 elections, the upcoming '02 mid-terms and the '04
election.

- Can you recall the patterns of traffic on the site - what the
traffic was after the launch, after the conversion to Gray Matter, and
at the time of the hiatus in 2003?

An average of about 200 readers a day around the launch, mostly from links
in Salon, and on Buzzflash to anything I wrote. With the GM community blog,
during 2002, it started at about 300, building throughout the run-up to the
election. I switched to a new design and movable type in the summer, and at
election-time height, in October 2002, it would get about 2000 visitors a
day, which made it the biggest community political blog for Democrats. A day
or two before the mid-terms, MyDD was profiled on CNN as a blog following
the elections, and the site literally doubled in traffic from there to 4000
a day.

- Why do you think liberal political blogs took off more quickly than
conservative political blogs, which still haven't caught up?

Conservative political blogs were much stronger than liberal ones throughout
2001-2002. What turned the corner for the liberal ones, was having comments
and building communities. MyDD was the first blog to have an "Open Thread",
in the middle of 2002. I did it because people wanted to talk about things
not related to the particular blogpost, but it took off from there, into our
having guest posters (Matthew Gross was the first), and then with Scoop, in
2003 on DailyKos, to becoming diaries. Comments were the first wave of
interactivity, signaling that this was more of a community thing than just
one individual talking with a megaphone. It took away control from the
individual, and gave power to the community. An individual or a group still
takes the lead with the posting, but it's sorta like driving with no hands
and having your knees on the wheel. It's more democratic.

Our ability to move the interactive, community-driven, blog into the Dean
campaign gave us a huge leap ahead of what the right was doing with blogs.
Joe Trippi saw what was happening for Dean on MyDD, with the decentralized
Netroots for Dean movement during 2002, and actively engaged myself and
Markos, in January of 2003, with forming a strategy of replicating that
success for Dean. That was pivital, because later on, when it brought
hundreds of thousands of people online with the Dean campaign, they moved
from there into the broader blogosphere.

There's also something to be said for being in the opposition as well.
During the 1990's and the 2000 election, besides a few of us hanging out in
the Delphi and Salon forums, the multitudes were Republicans in FreeRepublic
and Lucianne. During 2000, the Freepers actively mobilized for Florida
action. We did nothing but write about it. Seeing that led me to believe
later on, that we needed to take the netroots talk and put it into
grassroots action, which we tried to do with the Dean campaign. Of course,
we ran into problems with managing that community growth and expectation,
but it brought big successes as well.

So it's the community aspect which I would point toward as what gives us the
edge. Today's conservative bloggers are not as naturally disposed toward
democratic discussion as are liberal bloggers. The conservatives are more
apt to not allow disagreement, and stamp out dissent. Take the recent ouster
of Trevino at RedState, for an example. RedState is probably the most
'moderate' rightwing blog out there, and they can't even stand a bit for
criticism of Bush, even when he's most obviously failed at leadership and
execution in the face of a natural disaster. Trevino made one
moderate-speaking post that criticized Bush, and he's forced to resign. That
sort of thing would not happen with the liberal blogs, we are more able to
criticize our own, and allow for dissent, without having to stamp out those
on our side that disagree-- that the Democratic Party is becoming the Big
Tent political party is most obvious on the blogs.