Exactly 15 years ago, at 12:57 pm PT, Daily Kos went live with the lamest first post ever. Well, maybe it wasn’t lame, in context. But had I known Daily Kos would become what it is today, I might’ve given it a bit more thought, perhaps wordsmithed a little more. As it was, I was testing out this newfangled “blog” thing, and that’s apparently what burst out of my keyboard (on one of those original Bondi Blue iMacs).
Now here we are, 15 years later, 15 years older, 15 years wiser, 15 years more battle-tested, 15 years more cynical, but 15 years more hopeful of where we came from and how far we’ve come.
As an organization, we’ve certainly come a long way. While that first post was written on a Sunday (I went and checked), on a day of a lunar eclipse no less, most of my early blogging was done surreptitiously at work. In fact, that’s where the name came from—I needed something quick and dirty that didn’t out me to my boss, so I went with my Army nickname until I could “think of something better.” I never did. The name stuck.
Today, we just onboarded our 55th employee, with another five in the wings in the next couple of months. We hit nearly 20 million unique visitors on peak months. Tens of thousands participate in the community. Our email list is almost 3.5 million strong. And we’re raising millions for individual candidates. The scale is so massive, so awesome, that I can’t wrap my mind around it. It’s too abstract. And yet … here we are.
I’d like to say that first and foremost, the most important thing to this site’s success was you, the community. But that honor goes to my wife, Elisa. This site has been a source of some of our greatest joys and accomplishments, but also a source of sacrifice for her. The amount of work, effort, and time I put into building this place hasn’t always been kind to us as a couple—a trend only exacerbated by having children. It was always Elisa who compromised on career and time as I focused on this orange beast. When the kids came, she bore the brunt of the childcare. When she wanted to spend time together, I’d be too busy to give her that time, or too overworked and tired to give her the attention she deserved.
We’re working hard to repair that damage, but I don’t want there to be any doubt—she may not get official credit for it, but Elisa is, by deed and right, a co-founder of Daily Kos. She was there from the beginning, supporting, helping, advising, and suffering the anxieties of entrepreneurship. For example, she allowed me to quit my full-time job with great pay and benefits to focus on this site … when she was four months pregnant! That alone was too much to ask, but she bore it all with grace and dignity. And while she’s focusing on what her next stage of life will be, I am ready to give her my everything in support. I can never match her efforts on my behalf and that of Daily Kos (we’re not having more children!), but if there’s a note of sadness and regret here, know that it is followed by boundless optimism for what her future holds. She is my everything. I adore her. And I just need everyone to know that without her, there would be no Daily Kos.
But yup, you guys are right there, at the top as well! Goddamn, I love you guys. Sometimes I hate some of you! (I’m sure the feeling is mutual!) But by and large, you are the most amazing group of people I could ever hope to see gathered in any one place.
I always like to say that it’s a big internet, and if someone doesn’t like it here, there are plenty of other places that are likely more suitable. Yet so many of you remain, and that community continues to grow. It is a big internet, and yet the fact that you still make this your political online home is humbling to me. And goddamn, I LOVE how fucking active you are! Yeah yeah, in these times of Resistance, being politically engaged is kinda trendy and hip. But you guys were there FROM THE BEGINNING, before it was trendy! When no one else gave a damn about state-level races, many of you did. If America looked more like you guys, Democrats would be in charge of everything, and they would all look like Elizabeth Warren.
But heck, no one is complaining about the new activist class. These new Resistance fighters are amazing! I have been mentoring many of its leaders, and in the same way as I’m sort of a granddaddy of the resistance, so are you. You guys have been around the block more than once. And now that we have reinforcements, you guys get to be mentors and leaders as well. And all of us, collectively, get to fight for the America we believe in!
Then there’s the staff. There are so many people doing so many important things, that I would be better served just pointing to our masthead than naming names. But I will talk about a few.
Susan Gardner came aboard as a Contributing Editor back in … 2005 I think (same time as Joan McCarter), and I promptly disappeared for six weeks on my Crashing the Gate book tour (a grueling 40-city affair). When I returned, traffic to the site was higher than when I had left, and everything was running more smoothly than ever. Not long after that, she was officially in charge of the editorial team, a position she has kept since then, growing our editorial department from a bunch of volunteer writers, to the professionalized team we have today.
Will Rockafellow was a college friend. He was cool and went to parties and worked on bringing bands to campus like Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins. I stayed home at night and played Civilization II on my computer. But we both worked at the school newspaper and ran in similar circles, and when he moved to the Bay Area, we connected right away and became closer friends than we’d ever been in college. As Daily Kos grew, he quietly volunteered his business chops. Then one day I woke up and he was running the business, growing it to the powerhouse that it is today. Daily Kos would exist without Will, but it would be a much smaller blog, like it was back in the day. Running a business is hard. Running it ethically and progressively is even harder. And Will has made it look easy.
It is said that entrepreneurship is lonely work. Few people understand the stresses and pains of starting something from scratch, and that goes double for an endeavor like this one with the multitude of people sniping from the sidelines, so many thinking they could do things better. But with Susan and Will, I’m never that lonely. They help refocus and center me when I lose my way, they are a sounding board of ideas, a fountain of wisdom. They help me be the best CEO possible. I’d be even better if I listened to them more…
Then there’s Chris Bowers, an early blogosphere pioneer, who essentially saved Daily Kos from economic collapse. He came up to me at a conference and pitched me on building an email list. Will and I had been talking about one of those, but had no idea how to proceed. Chris solved that problem, and we thought cool, an email list!
A year later, in 2008, Google’s adwords decimated the publishing industry. While previously, we were getting paid $20 per thousand ad impressions, Google’s new advertising product dropped that to less than $1 per thousand. Overnight, our chief revenue source collapsed. The liberal blogosphere was destroyed by this change. And then, to pile on the misery, the global economy decided to take a dive because of those damn credit default swaps. That email list kept us alive, in several ways, from being a fantastic source of fundraising (which is why campaigns covet emails so much), to using it to drive additional traffic to the site. (Our daily headlines email is hugely popular.) At this point, that email list generates, directly or indirectly, over two-thirds of our revenue. And without Chris—not just in creating the initial list, but in his continued creativity in wielding that list for impact—Daily Kos would be a rump of what it is today.
David Nir has built a powerhouse of an elections team today, the likes that gets mentioned in the same breath as the DCCC. But in those early days, he was just a nerd like me, geeking out over partisan indexes and census data and turnout rates and the like. There weren’t a lot of people like us, so we stuck together like the last two Cheerios in a bowl of milk. Today’s Daily Kos is a lot of things to a lot of people. But at its very core, embedded deep into its DNA, it’s a site about winning elections. David was instrumental in building that DNA.
Rounding out the founding team, you know Tim Lange, aka Meteor Blades, as the patron saint of the community (although he’d likely bristle at “saint”). And yes, he is that! But to me, he was my earliest validator, bringing his impressive intellect to my little dinky corner of the internet. And quality begets quality, as his presence drew so many others in. But beyond brains, his vast stores of knowledge and history of progressive movements and steady, calm hand, were key in shaping Daily Kos in those crucial early years.
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When I first sat down to write this, I pictured taking a trip down memory lane—the anti-war era, the Howard Dean campaign, Obama 2008, the pie wars, some of my most embarrassing moments, all the way working up to today, with the site’s renewed profile on the political stage. I was going to talk about how far we’ve come as a movement. Fifteen years ago, Democrats talked about cutting Social Security to “save it,” and Howard Dean was a craaaaazy unelectable maniac for supporting civil unions! We really have come a long way as a party. …
But really, as you read above, I ended up wanting to talk about the people who made it happen at the beginning. And as I look to the future, that’s what I think of—not what features we have and how much money we raise, but how can we make things better for people.
Because no matter how introverted I might be (and I am painfully so), that’s what I most care about. People. I care about my family. I care about my staff. I care about you, the community. I care about the broader progressive community. I care about marginalized communities under assault from Trump. I care about this country. I care about this world. And we’re going to have a role to play in shaping the future of all those people.
This horrifying Trump era has given us the resources to finally build pieces of infrastructure we should’ve had all along. Daily Kos will be part of that, helping bolster liberal media, activism, and political engagement. We will be a megaphone for the new Resistance and all its groups as we seek to wipe Republicans from power at all levels in this country.
But even as we dream big, I’m also refocused closer to home, making sure that Daily Kos works even better for all of you, my beloved community. We have new tools in the works, a new homepage, new services and features and whatnot. And yes, our pace of development has been historically glacial. Every time we think we have things under control, new challenges arise, whether it’s scaling to meet massive new traffic, or engaging in a top-bottom security review in the face of hostile Russian forces. But more resources mean new hires, and with new people coming online we’re able to do more, and faster. And every time we consider a feature, the first question always is, and always will be, “how will this help and serve the community?” If we can’t answer that question, nothing else matters. It is a core, fundamental value.
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When I first started Daily Kos, I would make those silly “40 under 40” lists. Now I’m fast approaching 50. (Currently, I’m half-90 years old!) I am a grizzled vet, with the scars to prove it. I won’t be in charge of this place in 15 years. Some time before then, I will have handed the reins to a new generation of leadership (though I’ll still look over their shoulders from the Board of Directors!). I’m not going to be one of those people who stick around past their prime as their organizations ossify from lack of new blood and thinking. And heck, with less time spent on running a company, I’ll have a ton more time to write again! Some of you might even consider that a good thing!
So Daily Kos will look a lot different in 15 years, just like it looked different 15 years ago when I first started it. And that’s a good thing! Because the world changes, people change, situations change, technology changes, habits change, and what makes an organization an effective agent for change will always, always, always change. That’s the beauty and scary thing about being a progressive. We’re not fighting for the status quo, we’re fighting for what’s possible. And that’ll always be a moving target.
But what will never change is a focus on people, and fighting for a better life for everyone. The tools and tactics and people leading the charge will change, but our overriding purpose will not. And I can’t wait to see what the next 15 years bring, whether from the corner office (really, a corner chair in a big room), or from the sidelines.
I like to say that my superpower is the ability to attract amazing people, and that’s true in every facet of my life—from my wife, to my friends, to my community, to my coworkers. These next 15 years will be amazing because everyone around me is amazing. With all this insanely impressive firepower, we can’t help but win.
Thanks for making 15 years possible. I love you all.