Democrats and civil liberties
Saturday, November 15, 2008 by Dave Winer.
There were at least two things I learned from going to the DNC this year that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't gone. 
1. There wasn't much disunity in the party between Clinton and Obama supporters. I knew this because, while the television networks were reporting a big division, you just didn't see it in Denver. When there were demonstrators, it was always the same group of about ten people. They looked like the people you see at street demos in Berkeley, who, sorry to say, no one takes seriously. There were far more abortion protestors present than Hillary protestors. Orders of magnitude more. You could also see it by talking to people who wore Hillary badges in the convention center, which I did. A few times I sat next to them, or was in a line with them, and we talked and everyone agreed that this was a Democratic year, and nothing would stand in the way of that. I think McCain's people listened too much to the TV people, and didn't bother to check with the people at the show and they overestimated division in the party.
2. There are a number of perennial Democratic Party issues, they will always get applause from Democratic audiences. The teachers union, for example, has always been a big voting bloc among Dems, and Democratic speakers always get a big cheer when they advocate raising the pay of teachers. A number of other topics are pretty good too, but the best consistent applause line, the one that got people on their feet every time at the DNC was the destruction of civil liberties by the Republicans in the last 8 years. I'm sure the leaders of the Democratic Party weren't in the hall for all the speeches, so I hope they don't miss this. If they don't do something to reverse the mistakes of the last 8 years, even while dealing with the economic and security issues, they will quickly lose the support of the party.
NYT: Democratic Pressure on Obama to Restore the Rule of Law.
CQ: Hill Democrats Wait for Obama Stance on Interrogation Standards.
| Recent stories: |
"The protoblogger." - NY Times.
"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.
One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web. "Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.
"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.
"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.
Dave Winer, 53, pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in Berkeley, California.
Dave Winer 
My most recent trivia on Twitter.
