My Fieldtrip to YearlyKos

Ideas in America come from all directions; for every corporate think tank there are a hundred garage inventors. I walked into the Riviera convention center in Las Vegas and found an incubator for creative change in American politics.

I am still developing my blogging skills so it was inspiring to be in meeting rooms with accomplished bloggers. These are people who have a fundamental understanding of the responsibility of citizens in a free society. In the couple of interviews I did people asked why a Congressional candidate would bother to show up at YearlyKos. For me the answer was easy: to learn. I am old enough to remember the discussions after the Kennedy/Nixon debate on television. The regular media people spent a lot of time trying to figure out what, if anything, had happened. By the 1968 elections we all knew that television had fundamentally changed how candidates interacted with their constituents. I believe we are just discovering how important the blogosphere is becoming to political debate, how it enfranchises people all over the county to participate in politics. The people I spoke with and listened to are focused on finding solutions to real problems, they are not interested in obscuring the challenges that face our country with false problems. This was a great event for me and made me even more determined to win in November.