Have you always wanted to go to Netroots Nation? NN12 is going to be easy driving distance for us in New Jersey - it's in Providence, Rhode Island, June 7-10, 2012. And if you get your ticket before midnight tonight, you can get it at a discount.
Blue Jersey bloggers have been at every Netroots Nation since it started. At Netroots, you find 3,000 or so of the swiftest, toughest progressive bloggers, and political activists in the country. It's a very stimulating gathering which celebrates the kind of progress that ordinary citizens are capable of driving. And the parties? Awesome.
Keith Olbermann is already booked for NN12. Al Franken welcomed bloggers to his hometown last year. Howard Dean's done Netroots. Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton. But the bigger deal is the ordinary people who will flock to Providence. People like you.
You coming?
Use this link to register. Scroll down to the "register now" button. Do it by midnight tonight (Friday, December 16, 2011) & you'll get the early bird rate - $195.
I am here at the CPAC conference in Washington DC, and had the opportunity to see Mitt Romney speak this morning. CPAC - the Conservative Political Action Conference - is as crucial a gathering of neoconservatives, paleoconservatives, Tea Party people and rank-and-file Republicans as the Netroots Nation conference is for our side. The place is crammed with Republican presidential hopefuls and I'm enjoying walking around talking to people who probably disagree with me on just about everything.
I have met a large contingent from NJ, and got a chance to interview some of them. Will post video later.
So, about a week and a half ago, Adam L a/k/a clammyc & I were in Vegas at Netroots Nation. And Joey Novick split his time between Netroots and the far-right's smaller (but growing) blogger conference called Right Online, which seems to follow Netroots everywhere, always plopping down in the same city wherever Netroots goes.
I don't know how Joey did both. The whiplash would drive me nuts. And that's one of the reasons this short video - A Tea Partier at Netroots Nation - (by sterno74 via our friend at DownWithTyranny) cracks me up. Cannot. Stop. Laughing. Turn the sound up, shoo small children from the room (um, language) and enjoy my nightmare. This is what a day in Hunterdon County is like.
This morning, Vegas time, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be here at NN10 to take questions from 2,000 bloggers here at NN10. Later today, Majority Leader Harry Reid shows up to do the same thing.
Got any questions you want us to ask? Can't guarantee we'll get the time at the microphone, but we'll try. Use Comments to post your question.
Reid's opponent - SharronAngle - is also in Vegas, though I doubt she'd have the courage to walk through the halls here and take any of our questions, since she seems to specialize in dodging anybody's questions. Maybe Angle will feel more comfortable tonight when she's the closing speaker at the Right Online conference, which each year follows Netroots Nation to whatever city it's in, and draws righty bloggers there. They're bigger than they were last year. Turnout's still less than half of Netroots Nation, but they're telling participants that Right Online now outstrips our size. Their big draws are Michele Bachmann, Angle, Curtis Sliwa.
Angle's their closer tonight. Al Franken closes Netroots Nation. We win.
Yesterday was a wash in terms of getting anything out the door. There are 2,000 bloggers and politicians here at the swanky Rio Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, but yesterday so much pull on the bandwidth that it crashed the internet here ... for hours.
Everybody here is working on strengthening the progressive movement. It's a buzzy place.
The first big session of the day yesterday was Primaries Matter: Reclaiming the Democratic Party. Bill Halter the big draw; his narrow loss in the Arkansas Senate Primary last month to incumbent Blanche Lincoln was the kind of galvanizing opportunity that drew in activists from all over the country, showing up to buttress the drive for change of the locals on the ground. Redefining what the Dems are all about via the choice of a forward-thinker over a moderate.
Halter was great, giving credit for making his campaign viable quickly. He outlined how roots groups massed - superquick - to make his run viable. He declared March 1. By end of day March 2, he'd raised $1 million on the strength of asks made by DFA, PCCC & MoveOn. Later, field staff and organizers materialized from all over the country.
And the drivers of Halter's soar were the rest of the panel - Arshad Hasan who runs DFA, Adam Green (PCCC), Ilyse Hogue (MoveOn), Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos, and the CM for Elaine Marshall's Senate .
Adam, who used to be the Communications Director of the NJDSC, talked about how progressives were viewed by the Party as rabblerousers, clueless complainers who didn't realize how much their desire to shift the party progressive was going to cost Democratic seats (a theme echoed in Washington Post's coverage of the session.
That got big laughs. The room was packed with people who make things happen for candidates the infrastructural party ignores, or opposes. They're primarying candidates who deserve challenge. The mother of all is Ned Lamont's meteoric (winning) primary challenge to Joe Lieberman, which gave courage to the entire class of 2006 Dem congressional candidates to come out against the Iraq War.
Halter said the only thing he'd have done differently in his race was getting in earlier - he had only a 77-day window (but lost by only 3 points). Halter's campaign had the life, the drive, viable $$ (credit netroots) - he was the stronger candidate. (Our old friend Steve Kornacki does a great job explaining why the wrong candidate won this race - at salon.com)But Lincoln's had the power of incumbency, the infrastructural party (which should have been with Halter, if it was smart) and Bill Clinton who used his considerable powers for her. On this, Adam Green was definitive:
It's tough to see someone you've believed in betray you in a big way. We need to pick our heroes. . . . I think it would be sad if we went through this entire conference without calling out Bill Clinton for what he did.
More later. Met up with Adam L aka clammyc this morning, and we're hitting up sessions and meetings.
Adam (the artist formerly known as clammyc) and I are on our way to sunny Vegas for Netroots Nation, where we'll join up with about two thousand of our fellow pajamas-wearing agitator/bloggers for the huge conference now marking its 5th anniversary.
I'll post more later, but what I want to know right now is if anyone in the Blue Jersey community is also going, so we can find a place to meet up and get all Jersey in Vegas, baby.
Zerlina blogs as Lady Z at The Urban Politico, a blog I like a lot. She's a founder, and the manager. And she just started blogging in September.
The Urban Politico's a 4-person team, in NJ, Philly & D.C. - one a lawyer, one in state government and the other working in D.C. Zerlina's works as a paralegal by day, and attends Rutgers Law School, Newark as a night student. She's "the most liberal" of the four, says they talk all day long, and often collaborate on diaries. And they weigh in on each other's posts with "2 cents" reactions that broaden the conversation. Some of those conversations go on for a days, like the question, Is Gay the New Black?
Zerlina's a fellow at New Leaders Council, and was an organizer posted in Virginia for the Obama campaign, but says her blog chops come from heavy on-line reading after college (Tufts, she's 28). Before she found blogging, she shipped op-eds she found to friends via facebook. She's always been the person "everybody goes to for news."
Best way to describe Netroots Nation is blogger heaven. A couple thousand extraordinarily smart and opinionated people under one roof all at the same time to confab and, uh, seriously party. Speakers lineup isn't out year, but Senator Al Franken (damn, that still sounds awesome) is closing, and last year's speakers included Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, and Valerie Jarrett. Anybody can go, but the DFA NN10 scholars get most of their expenses paid (want to help contribute to that?), an extraordinary thing DFA does. Want to see what a winning application looks like? Here are the Round One winners. May 23's the deadline for Round Two.
I'll be at Netroots Nation. So will Adam. And Lady Z. You coming?
Hi- my name is Spedwybabs. I'm a regular at Daily Kos and today I wanted to introduce myself and tout the Netroots Nation Auction and why I'm such a strong supporter of Netroots Nation.
My happy story begins last June when kossack jnhobbs blew into town and I got to meet him face to face. Jnhobbs is someone I've long admired, long before I knew him as a kossack and I was tickled pink to get the chance to actually meet him. While we were talking that night he asked if I was attending Netroots Nation in Pittsburgh, which is only 6 hours away from me by train. I wasn't planning to. I had been involved in the diary efforts for Netroots for the Troops and WANTED to attend, but considering the dire financial situation of my business (at the time I was co-owner of a very struggling restaurant) I just didn't think it was going to be possible.
We had plenty of coverage of the Governor at Netroots Nation yesterday. Yesterday while there for the panel, he met with a group of progressive bloggers and sharply criticized Christie's discussions with Rove: (Via Think Progress)
It is hard to understand how a lawbreaker gets the reputation of being the king of law enforcement, and uses that as a platform. It's the Hatch Act.
After the Governor took center stage for a panel discussion at Netroots Nation earlier today about Building a 21st Century economy, he took a moment with Rosi and Adam to offer a few words:Matt Yglesias from over at Think Progress sends out this twitpic of a flyer that was on the tables at Netroots nation directing people to the NJ State AFLCIO site therealchrischristie.org
Clammyc liveblogged the Governor's panel discussion with the Governor, Kevin Drum, Dean Baker and Anna Burger over at DailyKos. Corzine dropped by to offer this comment in the thread after finishing the panel:
Clammyc told me this diary was up, and I wanted to quickly thank everyone who followed our discussion on Kos, Blue Jersey, and uStream.
I'd like to continue this, so I'll post a diary on some of the topics we touched in our conversation very, very soon.
It was a great conversation, and thanks to Netroots Nation for inviting me. Talk to you all soon.
Jon
Shout out to Clammy for a good liveblog, since I couldn't watch the Governor live, but was able to go back later and check out his coverage. When the archived video is available, we'll post that. You can also follow along with what other people were saying at Netroots Nation by checking out the #nn09 hashtag.
UPDATE: This is LIVE with Corzine now, and Adam and I are live-blogging the panel here at Daily Kos. If you have an account there, please recommend the post so it stays up on the front page.
Here at Netroots Nation, Valerie Jarrett is in the big convention hall being interviewed right now by one of my favorite people, Baratunde Thurston. In less than two hours, it will be Gov. Corzine on that stage, headlining a panel: Building a 21st Century Economy.
It's a big deal here. There are 2000 progressive political bloggers here in Pittsburgh and every one of them knows that there are only two governors races in the country in 2009; two chances for a moribund Republican Party to try and generate some momentum for 2010. Virginia's an open seat. And Jon Corzine is the only incumbent governor in the US up this year. We already know - and so do colleagues here - the GOP's going to pour in resources in the Garden State.
That's why Jon Corzine is such a featured player here, headling on of only 6 plenary sessions: Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, PA Senate candidates Joe Sestak & Arlen Specter, Valerie Jarrett from the White House, and Darcy Burner, and Corzine.
Adam and I will be interviewing the Governor in a few minutes along with a handful of bloggers including Chris Bowers, Duncan Black, Marcy Wheeler, Amanda Terkel and Joe Sudbay. And - big news - we'll be bringing you Gov. Corzine on Blue Jersey Radio Tuesday.
Want to watch Corzine's session LIVE? Here's the live stream, Corzine will be on at noon.
Twittering? Use the hashtag #NN09. If there's a hashtag for you to lob questions in to the panel, I'll post it when I know it.
This is how you want to arrive at Netroots Nation - the former Yearly Kos - the now-massive annual mojo-booster for progressive political blogger titans and titans-to-be. Clammyc - oh, hell, let's just call him Adam - and I rolled in this afternoon, and promptly started drinking, and connecting up.
And it's a buzzy night here right now. New Jersey is on the front page of DailyKos, in a great diary by Jake McIntyre: NJ-Gov: The Other Shoe Dropping for Christie. So ... Chris Christie's got a little Karl Rove problem. Please go read it, add your own New Jersey-flavored comment, and then shoot that bad boy to 10 of your bestest friends. Especially the ones leaning toward Christie.
It's important to understand what the stakes are here: Karl Rove, Republican strategist, architect of the Bush White House, and pit bull for the man who appointed Christie the US Attorney, said on the record to the House Judiciary Committee July 7, 2009, that he spoke to Christie several times over several years. That is, apparently, while he was United States Attorney. US Attorneys are barred by the United States Justice Dept. from engaging in partisan politics while in office. It's a safeguard to avoid undue influence, impropriety, even the appearance of impropriety. Given that Christie is running on his record as USA, a violation of the Hatch Act further soils his credibility.
Word spreads fast here in Pittsburgh. I just walked through the lobby and got high-fived by five people. Everybody knows Jon Corzine is coming to Netroots Nation Saturday. He'll be here to talk economy, but the buzz has already started that the truth will out when it comes to what Chris Christie doesn't want voters to know about. Christie was George Bush's hand-picked - and now we find out, hand-fed - man in the Garden State.
This morning, clammyc and I are hitting the road on the way to beautiful Pittsburgh and Netroots Nation 09. I'm stoked.
I'm going as one of Democracy for America's Netroots Nation Scholars. DFA has this fabulous competitive program to underwrite costs for people they think ought to have that opportunity. It's a savvy way of undescoring deep ties between grassroots political organizers and those of us who ride the interwebs. I'm very lucky they chose me. (Shrugs.)
If you've got the means, throw DFA some coin. They're sending 40 of us this year to NN09- and that's all expenses paid.
Last year, they sent 30. On of them was Jeff Gardner, my buddy and a denizen of this site, and of DFA-NJ, like I am. There was a friendly, but cutthroat competition for votes with one Robert Harding at The Albany Project, which Jeff won, being that he's awesome. Don't worry, Robert got to go, too.
Clammyc's an old hand at NN, and he's participating in a session on red districts (for the fighting NJ-5) and moderating this one on PTSD.
Saturday, we'll be there to greet Governor Corzine, headlining the keynote panel, on 21st Century economy. It's a great "get" for Netroots Nation. With just two big state races this year - NJ & VA - the Republicans are focusing a lot of resources here to try and climb out of their hole. That's a story every blogger at NN09 is going to know. (Barring last-minute surprise, Creigh Deeds, running for the open seat in VA, won't be there).
Promoted up top again by Rosi - Who's going to Netroots Nation, besides me, clammyc and the Govy?Promoted up top again by Rosi - - Okay, who's going to Netroots Nation besides me, clammyc and the Govy?
From an email sent out by Netroots Nation:
Shortly after President Obama took office, he remarked, "We need new rules of the road for the 21st century economy, together with the means and willingness to enforce them." But in today's world, economic solutions must include more than just bailouts and regulations.
As our leaders push to solve our country's financial crisis, how can we maintain confidence in the economy while protecting the interests of the middle class? What are some of the pivotal policy decisions that are being made now, and what will a "21st century economy" look like? And how can we as progressives help for progressive change in areas such as health care and workers' rights?
On August 15, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, Change to Win Chair Anna Burger and economist Dean Baker will join us in Pittsburgh for a discussion about the economy and how it affects working Americans.
Building a 21st Century Economy, scheduled for Saturday at noon, will give you and your fellow attendees an opportunity to hear from leaders who are on the front lines of some of these policy battles. The panel will be moderated by Kevin Drum of Mother Jones.
We'll have Rosi and ClammyC at Netroots Nation sharing the wealth with the rest of us. Are any of our readers headed to Pittsburgh? If you haven't already, you can register here.
I've been to many conferences, and this was definitely one of the best - great speakers, friendly participants, amazing surprise guests - and Austin, TX is definitely a cool city to visit. I tried to keep the New Jersey-bound in the loop as much as possible, and I hope you enjoyed the Netroots Nation diaries of the last few days.
Now, I took a bunch of pictures, but I'm certainly no photographer. Still, flip on over to the other side to see some of them. It will definitely help me fill in some of the blanks left out in the earlier diaries, and recap some of the highlights of the conference.
[insert gratuitous Arshad and Markos photo]:
This is Markos Moulitsas of dKos, and Arshad Hasan of DFA just before the panel with Markos and Rep. Harold Ford (now of the DLC) that Arshad moderated. Moments later, Ford arrived and they all took the stage for a discussion on the direction of the Democratic party. Memorable, to say the least.
Each week, Blue Jersey Radio streams LIVE with New Jersey's latest political buzz, interviews with newsmakers, and your stimulating calls.
This week: Jeff wraps up his trip and our coverage from Netroots Nation in Texas while Jason tries to stay cool with everyone else in the NJ Heat Wave. We'll have all the buzz from both places, plus anything else you'd like to add to the conversation. Give us a call this afternoon at 12:30 p.m. and we can discuss.
We're live from 12:30p-1:00p today, and would love to hear from you. Just call: 646-652-2773
I went to another great panel at Netroots Nation today called "The Races We Aren't Watching But Should (and Those We're Watching Too)" - a panel made up of Markos Moulitsas, and Arjun Jaikumar (Daily Kos), Jonathon Singer (MyDD), and DavidNYC and James Lambert (SwingStateProject). While the audience was really large, it pretty much felt like the kind of conversation you might have with your best political friends - if you had some really A-list political friends.
The panel started with Senate races, and covered some of the usual suspects - the Udalls, Jeanne Shaheen. They noted how many races are very much in play as potential Democratic pickups, and reminded us how these things tend to go in trends (albeit sometimes in very bad directions - as in 2004). But, I saw that SSP lists Senator Lautenberg on its short list of "Races to Watch," so I asked what that was about.
Seems no one's really worried about New Jersey. But, there was so much schpilkis of the genectagezoink during the primary when it was a race to watch, that they're keeping an eye on it just a bit longer. (Also, of course, Lautenberg's polling numbers aren't exactly in blowout territory.)
But, everyone knows the familiar story by now - Republicans LOVE to spend millions losing in the Garden State. We should expect they may feel like doing it again this year. So, the consensus was: let them.
When attention turned to the House, Markos noted the real opportunity to expand the majority to as many as 101 seats. And, during the presentation, New Jersey was one place singled out as helping get us to that number, with John Adler being specifically praised as the very strong candidate he is (hint: watch for SSP's next update on House races coming out this weekend).
New Jersey also featured the only question to stump the panel: who's going to be the next member of Congress from NJ-1? Apparently, we're not the only ones wondering who that will be.
Unfortunately, so many people had questions, I totally blew my opportunity to ask about our House races during the main session.
Not to worry. I grabbed DavidNYC after the session to talk about other NJ races for consideration, and when I mentioned Dennis Shulman, he lit up - they really like what they're seeing and hearing, which is why the race was earlier bumped up to lean Republican. And, although it's not moving any further up the scale in today's rankings, it is a race they're watching.
Update: Time Magazine apparently agrees Shulman's is a race worth watching. -JG
Al Gore on Blue Jersey Radio?! Well,... no. But, this show aired when I was just back to the "studio" fresh off Gore's surprise visit to Netroots Nation where he joined Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Hope you like it! - JG
Each week, Blue Jersey Radio streams LIVE with New Jersey's latest political buzz, interviews with newsmakers, and your stimulating calls.
This week: Jeff is still giving reports and sending photos live from Netroots Nation in Texas and Jason continues standing guard on the homefront in South Jersey. We'll have all the buzz from both places, plus any juicy bits you want to chime in with. Give us a call this afternoon at 12:30 p.m. and we can discuss.
We're live from 12:30p-1:00p today, and would love to hear from you. Just call: 646-652-2773
UPDATE:If we only had Holly Shulman join us tonight, that would have been enough. (Holly is Dennis's daughter who's working on the campaign of Rick Noriega for U.S. Senate here in Texas.)
But, Dennis called in too, and as usual, was terrific, culminating in a mini-family reunion on air. A very special Blue Jersey Radio. Listen for yourself- JG.
Each week, Blue Jersey Radio streams LIVE with New Jersey's latest political buzz, interviews with newsmakers, and your stimulating calls.
This week: Jeff is still live from Netroots Nation in Texas, while Jason guards the homefront in South Jersey. After a fun turn on Sirius Satellite Radio this afternoon, it's back down the food chain to internet radio, but I loved talking to you all on the way up, and anxious to meet you again. Plus, we'll be joined by a few special guests, so you may just want to crank up the air conditioning and your volume, and join us. Give us a call tonight at 8:00 p.m. It'll be fun!
We're live in primetime one more time from 8:00p-8:30p tonight, and would love to hear from you. Just call: 646-652-2773
