I wish more of you would consider commenting

Ok, fine! You sucked a lurker in. I even made an account!

I'm sure there are more of you out there like me.. that being you browse through here, Kos, other leftoblogs, but never really contribute -- rather, we graze on the grassroots..

Stop grazing.. JOIN IN!

that i missed ykos.

i'm going to take some time tonight and watch the videos.  congrats on a very successful gathering!

Matt, it was a pleasure to meet you and every single person there.  I am exhausted but energized.  While the panels and an speeches were great, the real strength of Yearly Kos was what happened in the hallways, parties and by the pool.  We know each other so much better now and that will be such an advantage moving forward.

We weren't a day into it when people starting talking about looking forward to the next one and getting more people there.  I for one would leap at the chance to spend another four days with this amazing community.

There were only a thousand of us there, but as I was reminded on one panel, that's fewer people than were at the Constitutional Convention.

fewer?

Keep it short. DemocraticShortList.com

Might as well book the dates for next year and I'll get my plane ticket now.  No way I'm gonna let other things come up again.

Weirdos?

Keep this in mind as people are groaning about the circulation of the "tin foil hat" pictures.

(Bonus points, by the way, for identifying the, er, "gentleman" in the photo.)

Awesome Matt.  I really liked what you had to say at the Youth Outreach presentation.  I felt there was some unfair Dean bashing going on.  My thoughts are that he's in a really tough spot - he's half in and half out of DC.  

Schumer and Emmanuel are giving him shit and no doubt those people don't want younger voters.  

Don't get me wrong, I think Paul Yandura is right also about us (glbt) getting a lot of talk and not much else, but if Dean fulfills on his promises from the National Stonewall Convention then we should all be in a better place.  

Also, thanks for stickin up for us Matt.  You're a great guy.

Oh, and btw, whatever the rest of you might think, I am NOT a "special interest."  

Heh, some of the more righty reports I've seen say YearlyKos was boring (only the speakers talked politics, everyone else was just nice and polite) and uh, boring.

Awright, count me in on commenting more.  I'm often over at dKos, and "lurk" on over here occasionally.  

I'll become more active here; of course, when time allows.  

I'd like to attend the next dKos, but that $$ on hand to do so will be the decision maker.  However, what would be cool would be 6-month regional conventions.  Like a Northwest, Midwest, or S. Cal Primer - for example.  Just a thought.

Sure would have liked to attended this one, though.  From all the accounts posted over at dKos, it looked like much fun and fabulous knowledge being passed around.  Very cool.

I am wanting to attend the next YearlyKos.  I hope the organizers get more help.

I promise to comment on everything! (Especially stuff I know nothing about.)

and (i'm sure there is a lot of cross pollination and all), but for those that didn't check it out at the time... I have picture streams of ykos. So that those that were there "only in spirit" could enjoy it as well.

It's too bad I didn't get any pictures of the Aquacaucus.

Stoller! Let's talk about that thing, i'm going to whip together a "how we failed with DiFi" thing when I catch up on work and e-mail and everything else.

-C.

Maybe these conventions are important just so people can actually see each other once in a while but beyond that NOTHING has changed on the ground. In fact it's gotten worse as far as I can see. Soon the BIG Telcoms will be sealing off the Internet and turning it into just another Corp. owned francise to stuff the same endless crap in our faces and have the nerve to call it choice and (sic) freedom. So enjoy the moment but don't get to excited just yet. Sorry to have to be the turd in the punchbowl folks.

You mentioned this in response to one of my comments at the brunch on Sunday, and I totally agree.  There's great value in liberals and progressives having FUN.  Let's keep laughing and mocking and self-deprecating our way to victory.

And I hope to write a full diary on this, but I'll start here.

For those who were there (mostly at least), what comes of this?  I've spent the past week being driven crazy by jealousy because you were all there, but what happens now?  What do these steps lead to and how do we get started now?

I hope our criticism is always constructive.  

To amplify one of Matt's points.  Everyone I talked to at YearlyKos had an interesting story and had been doing something creative to make democracy real, making a better country and stopping war.  That is important.

There was a whiff of overconfidence at YearlyKos.  I do think some folks, present company excluded of course, underestimate the opposition.  Low poll ratings are one thing, winning elections is another.  On the big issues I don't think we have changed the country much -- yet.  We are building a movement and that takes time.  This is real -- really slow perhaps by some standards, but lasting change is usually this way.

Along the way lets have some fun. YearlyKos was a lot of fun.  Some folks worked VERY hard to make it happen.    

We have a culture of liberalism.  I know that sounds 'soft'...

It's the fact that so many of the YKos throng, cream of the liberal sphere, also made LAS their gateway.

Given that the airport is named for one of the most illiberal US Senators from outside of the Confederacy.

And topical as well as ironical, given that his two most (in)famous contributions to the US Code were in the fields of repression of civil liberties and exclusion of undesirable aliens.

(The Senate RCV on the override of Truman's veto of the McCarran Act (the Internal Security Act of 1950) showed all of ten brave souls (all Dems yay, Dems! - prepared to withstand the wrath of McCarran (and his better known partner-in-fearmongering, Joe McCarthy) and vote against.

Apart from Hubert Humphrey (still with his liberal halo fairly much intact from his performance at the 48 Convention), the rest of the ten, so far as their names mean anything to me, did not thrive in the Senate.

Legislative bravery is so rarely rewarded...

It's not easy to make frequent comments because discussions are always so fast paced. After a full day of class/work, I end up reading 18 hours worth of posts at a time. Usually my thoughts are represented by the time I read.

Working on local politics here in Texas has drawn me away from MyDD more than I like.

I haven't posted a diary since February.

I will try to be more visible (if people are interested in what I have to say!)

MMMM. Turds in the punchbowl. What lovely self-identification from a commenter above.

As far as "no weirdos" at YearlyKos, don't be so sure! I was just thinking about showing up next year.

Matt, I know you're tired and blogging from the airport, but you really should try to at least get the headline right.

I have no desire to be a Grammar Nazi. That's no fun. I'm a writer/editor by trade, so I catch a lot of mistakes - certainly in my own writing - and I don't bring it up, because this is an informal stage.

But language matters. Accuracy matters. If this was the first glaring mistake I'd seen in a headline here, I would keep my mouth shut, but it isn't. It just sends a lousy message when a piece is riddled with typos. Even worse when it begins with one. I consider MyDD to be one of the "Heavyweights" of the lefty blogoshpere. But heavyweights need to have certain standards.

I'm not criticising this mistake necessarily, but the poor editing in general on MyDD. And of course, you only criticise the ones you care about, right?

Matt, This is my first post on any blogsite.  From lurker to poster in one easy Yearly Kos convention.  I am a blog virgin no longer and we have "preppie little you" to thank for that.

You may remember me as the guy that told you how "fucking funny" you were as you were heading to the Jack Carter suite on Friday night. As a local Las Vegan I hope you and all the Kosaks enjoyed yourself in Vegas, and we hope you'll come back next year.  As the President of the Nevada Stonewall Democratic Caucus, I was privildedged to host the LGBT caucus on Thursday morning and it was just a primer of what was to come over the next four days.

On a personal note I enjoyed your presentations to the convention.  In fact, I immensly enjoyed  all the panels and presentations at the convention.  I have not been with a group of such smart, articulate, passionate, and committed activists since my days volunteering for Werner.  

But the biggest impression I got from attending the convention was that this really really looked like the beginning of a Progressive Community Movement.  Something that did not occur to me until I attended a few panels was the degree to which many of you, though you had been communicating together for some time, did not know one another.  But during the heady days of the first Yearly Kos convention, I suspect a Movement has coallesed.

Keep up the fight,

Dan

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