As everyone knows, today is the day that the 110th Congress – one in which the Democrats, for the first time in 12 years, will control the House and the Senate – is sworn into power. Personally, I’ll be catching a train in a couple of hours that’ll begin a long day for me down in Washington, D.C., where I’ll be mostly attending celebrations at the National Democratic Club and the offices of Rep.-elect Patrick Murphy. With the beginning of a new day in Congress, though, I’d like to announce the official launch of Progressive Wave, a blog where we’ll be covering our newly-elected representatives and senators in Congress.
One of the reasons we’re launching this blog is that we believe it’s important to continue covering our congresspersons after they’ve been elected. It’ll give everyone a better idea of how our new representatives and senators are doing in Congress. In time, we hope it becomes a valuable resource of information from people living in-state or in-district when the time for re-election rolls around. I do sincerely believe that because it will be local bloggers blogging about their representatives, the analysis that will be posted will come from the best perspective possible.
Although we are starting out covering a good number of the representatives and senators elected this past fall, we can always use more help. If you happen to live in the district or a state that has a new representative or new senator, we’d love to have your assistance. Blogging for us is a time commitment that is variable based on your schedule. If you like what you see, or you’re interested in the project, feel free to send an email to the address in my profile. We’ll continue to make the necessary changes to the interface as necessary; as the two of us (myself and HigherPie) are both students in college right now, we’ll keep up with the changes as best as possible.
I hope all of you pay a visit in due time. Thanks to anyone who does – this is an ambitious project, and we greatly appreciate anyone who gives us a read now and then.
Congrats, PsiFi. Duly bookmarked it, and looked around, too. I hope in a couple of years that there will be new Michigan folks to add to this list. I hope you’ll find bloggers for your missing districts before long, too.
Given the way some of the “old heads” have voted in the past few years, it will be important to contrast what you all take note of, with what we see among the group already representing the Blue side of the aisles. Lots of votes there haven’t been very progressive.
Best wishes to you and HigherPie on putting your great idea into action!
I’m signed up, and made a test post. More when I have some actual information.
Nice. Thanks, I had missed the announcement of the new Murphy baby, too.
I sure do wish that people would stop abusing the word “progressive” when referring to Democrats. It is nothing short of disinformation. The Democrats are progressive only in the sense that they are the progressive wing of the GOP.
Greens are progressive. Many Independents are progressives. Even some Libertarians are progressives. But the Democrats are right-wingers. The Republicans are extreme right-wingers.
Declaring Democrats ‘progressive’ is like saying Hitler was a liberal.
I agree with your general idea, but think it’s a bit overstated. Almost universally, Democrats in elected office are not from the left wing of the party. Most are centrists, or somewhat right of center (relative to the real political spectrum in this country), too many are conservative (Southerners, mostly).
But there are many legitimate progressive Democratic activists at the grassroots who still fight on within the party trying to bring it leftward (futilely for the most part, in my opinion). I wish them all kinds of success, but would like to see them eventually give up their quixotic fantasy and go Green or, if that’s just too much for them to bear (cue the Nader rants) start a real progressive political party of their own.
Oh, and I was initially gonna say that I hope this yet-another new Democratic campaign/blog for monitoring/petitioning politicians would really push the envelope and work to stretch the visible (in MSM, on the web) range of the political spectrum I referred to above. For instance, if I hear another Dem complain about Cindy Sheehan’s “methods” being counterproductive now that those oh so (not) progressive Dems control Congress, I’m gonna scream.
I wish diaries promoting other blogs would not be recommended. Besides, this is the fifth diary promoting a different website. Can we impose limits on repetitive diaries?
im glad they are allowed and recommended….i would miss them if they werent because sometimes im away for days or weeks at a time.
but it is a waste of space.
It’s not like they’re killing trees to put these up.
Look, there are a lot of diaries that go onto the recommended list that I consider a waste of space, because I don’t care for the subject material, I disagree enough with the diarist’s comments in other threads that I don’t think reading their diaries would be a good use of my time, or because I was especially grumpy that day and didn’t want to read anything no matter who wrote it, or whatever. No one is forcing me to read them. However, enough people did think the diary I dismissed as not being worth the electrons it took to excite the grid on my monitor was worth recommendeding to make the recommended list, so maybe I was wrong, or maybe the diary had value for someone else. And who am I to say they’re wrong?
its not a waste of space to me…its why i come here…to get info so i can act.
list is determined by the BooTrib blog community who apparently don’t think this plug’s a waste of space. Self-regulating community, power to the people, etc. It’s just a temporal space (how paradoxical) anyway and, like all diaries, this one will eventually move along. . .nothing to see here.
Until that time, I’m grateful for the chance to discover that a new liberal star has been born.
i’m getting an error message from Blogger while trying to post to AZ-08, are you hearing similar from other posters? It was working fine yesterday, but now I’m getting a big Eff You! (actually, it says: “We’re sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.”)
Details, details š
I had no problems… I have made a few posts there.
And I think I made the very first post on Progressive wave? (other than the test diaries)
I am not even a Dem and I am posting there. Trust me, I am more liberal than the bulk of you here at Booman Tribune… Progressive representation should not be an issue, for those that are worried.
The fact that I am that Canadian sort of Liberal (you know, a true centrist on the world stage) likely means that I am damn near communist compared to the Radical American Centrists… (McCain/Liberman, etc.)