Chris Bowers has finally made the announcement.
Today, after more than three years, I am stepping down as the lead writer and managing editor of MyDD. In a little more than three weeks, I will be starting a new website with Matt [Stoller] and one other partner, Mike Lux of the Huffington Post. Expect to hear more on that in the coming days.
Chris doesn’t mention the name or url of the new site. Maybe I convinced him to choose something different, so I wont drop any hints. Suffice to say, I wasn’t overwhelmed with their choice of name.
This is a move that has been a long time in coming and I’m glad to see the day has finally arrived. I’m really looking forward to their new project and I’m curious about how they are going to roll out their format and implement their ideas.
I don’t want to speak for Chris and Matt, but this comes down to ideology versus party. We needed a left-leaning majority in Congress, but now we have it. For me, the blogosphere has always been about opposition, not cheerleading. It’s in our blood. Like a shark, we can’t survive if we don’t keep moving. It’s not enough to support any kind of Democrat. There must be a purpose or a goal behind that support. Turning opposition into something constructive is not easy and the task is confounding many people in the blogging movement.
Here’s how Chris puts it.
As much as I have enjoyed writing about politics and elections from a partisan Democratic viewpoint, my political background is in the social justice movement and decidedly on the left. I want to write about more than just elections and political infrastructure, and I want to explicitly work toward building a progressive governing majority. However, to do so would be to take MyDD too far away from its longstanding purpose.
Chris just walked through the crack between blogging for party and blogging for ideology or policy. I know he is going to continue his successes in this new role.