Why not give Democratic Leaders & Selected Media Honorary DU Membership?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

I am sick and tired of hearing interviews with the press where I know more about issues than they do - Thanks to what I learn from the brilliant people here.

Has anyone at DU ever thought about sending honorary membership letters to selected media and Democratic leaders? Including say a promo of what we are about and an initial password?

[afdip]

1. why not wait to see if they sustain their courage . . . . one act

does not a courageous career make.

[Teaser]

3. There have been multiple such acts under Reid

and to deny it is indicative of not paying attention.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

5. Someone posted a good list of all the efforts yesterday ! Link...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2214013#2214013

[Teaser]

2. Encourage them to post here! Kos does it!

And there are not infrequent contributions from Democratic policymakers there. We could use that kind of dialogue here.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

4. Yes, that ties in the ego factor. I bet any politicians that posted

his/her ideas, would love to read what everyone said about them.

[Arkansas Granny]

6. It would be a good way to judge reaction before you went public

with a statement. Give them a chance to test the water before jumping in.

[MostlyLurks]

7. Bad Idea.

As much as I like DU, there is a population here that represents the worst of liberal politics, just as conservative sites are often represented by their worst posts (I exclude FR from this, as they are a collective hivemind of the worst of conservative politics).

Were a Democratic official to be given honorary membership to DU or post here, s/he could immediately be tarred with the worst aspects of DU. Furthermore, we're already completely paranoid about Freeper disruptors - imagine how much influence they could wield if they knew public officials were on DU discussing things.

For example, Reid could come to DU and discuss his move from yesterday, and some Freeper troll could then post a reply saying something like "I only wish you were allowed to take a gun in there with you." Approximately 40 nanoseconds later, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc would state that Reid participated in a discussion in which veiled threats to Republican officials were made. We all know that the context would go unheeded by the media, as would the fact that the offending post was made by somebody with no DU history, etc.

No, it's better if DU remains a community for grass roots activists and hoi polloi.

Mostly.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

8. Well, it doesn't have to be an outright posting naming them. They

could have a stupid name like the rest of us. My main issue was not for them to inform us, but for US to inform THEM...

[MostlyLurks]

9. Never give your power to someone else.

Participation on DU, in any form or fashion, is simply a bad move by any elected official. For one thing, it is run by someone else. Essentially, an official posting here endorses Skinner and the other owners and mods as a liberal/Democrat. For all we know, Skinner is a Commie terrorist sympathizer mass murdering panty sniffer. If Skinner et al are then found to be nefarious in some way, those officials who have posted here have "attached" their image and power to him and are subject to tarnishing from his image.

Put simply, a politician should never cede their image to anybody beyond their own control. It would be one thing if Democratic leaders founded their own blog and invited participation. They could recruit their own, trusted administrators, enforce rigid rules for creation of account, more stringent rules for tombstoning, etc. In other words, they could more effectively control the manner in which the site reflected their own image, keeping out the far-far-left radicals that DU welcomes/tolerates. They can't do that at DU because it is not under their influence.

I agree that Democratic politicians should become more involved in the use of the net to gather and guage public opinion, etc. But I disagree that they should do it on an established board like DU, which is already villified by the right. They'd be better to start a conglomerated "Washington Democrats" board that they could control and monitor. Additionally, this would centralize their 'net messaging apparatus, as opposed to having to post to Kos, DU, HuffBlog, TPMCafe, RawStory, etc. - I don't have a chance to read each of those on a regular basis and I suspect many are like me: I pick DU as my central repository and take ventures into Kos et al when time or need arises. The Kossacks have selected Kos, etc. This means pols have to run their message through all of those outlets, and they then have to monitor and respond to each of those outlets as discussion warrants. That's a lot of time and effort.

But if there were a cental locale for Washington Democrats to discuss whatever, I'd fold that into my regular reading schedule, as it represents the "words from on high". In fact, this seems very close to what the DCCC web site has started to do, and I'd be very happy if they'd spin that off into something like we're talking about here.

Mostly