I discovered Howard Dean on Meet the Press. I was forking out $1000 a month for health insurance at the time (I finally got old enough for Medicare) and Dr. Dean was talking about national health insurance, which at the time sounded rather revolutionary. What hooked me however, and kept him from sounding like JAL (Just Another Liberal) was his stance on gun control. He seemed to take the rather sensible (to me) position that the gun issue might be different in rural areas than it was in inner cities. In other words, Dean's approach to guns wasn't a kneejerk 'Guns Bad' that lefties seemed to espouse.
So I started reading and surfing and somehow discovered Dean for America. This was in its heyday when Joe Trippi was getting us all to write letters and send money and go to Meetups. Now, I'm a political neophyte. I vote, but I'd certainly never contributed to a campaign or stuffed an envelope. Anyway, I found myself writing heartfelt letters to people in Iowa, whose names I got from the Dean campaign. And I found great joy in watching the baseball bats that Trippi would post on the website turn red, frequently with help from me. And I drove to Gainesville (30 or 40 minutes from here) to attend a Meetup or two with likeminded souls. I bought buttons and the tshirt and wore them around my very red (and redneck) town in north Florida. Well, one Iowa primary and a 'scream' manufactured by the MSM brought an end to the Dean campaign.
But what remained was a blog at Dean for America, morphed into Democracy for America. Kindred souls would still gather there, post what occurred to them, and over the last four years, built a sense of community that I for one would find difficult to replace in my little life. There's a tango dancer out West who inspired me to visit Argentina, a lawyer from Montana who inspired me to travel around Switzerland on my own, a farmer in Iowa who names his newborn calves after bloggers -- you get the picture. The blog became my coffee shop -- a place to unload whatever was on my mind -- from erudite political musings with scholarly links -- to conveying my fears and first person reporting when hurricanes and forest fires moved near my home -- to sharing totally non-political 'contributions' about my love for opera and Barry Manilow.
Well, about a month ago, there was an announcement on the Blog about a new feature called the Water Cooler. The current Communications Director (DFA has been through a few) said the main blog would consist of postings only applying to the front thread and any other posts would be relegated to something called the Water Cooler. We complained vociferously, but never heard another word.
Then, yesterday, the Water Cooler was implemented. Front threaded items were (to me) kind of old news about subjects we'd already discussed and acted on. And comments that we made that were considered not on topic were quickly relegated to the Water Cooler, which I've taken to calling the Back of the Bus, since they seem to be segregating us into ontopic/offtopic or - now that I think of it -- politically correct and politically incorrect.
Anyway, it's too soon to tell how the Blog for America will shake out. Chances are as soon as the dust settles and we quit griping and flaming the powers that be there, we'll go obediently to the somewhat hidden Water Cooler area and post there, ignoring the boring front threads.
It does seem however like a sad end to the era of Dean for America -- what amounts to me as censorship on the Dean for America/Democracy for America blog.