Who Reads DU?

[HFishbine]

I see so many thoughtful posts here, but I always have a nagging doubt about how much inluence the sometimes enormous efforts put forth here have on the "players."

No doubt participants in DU are better informed, and maybe that should be enough. But I wonder, do elected officials, campaign advisors and/or policy makers read DU? Are any of you out there now?

[OrdinaryTa]

1. Ideas Matter

It would be foolish of political influentials to ignore this board, and I suspect they don't. Not all politicians browse here, and not all staff people do either. It's quite likely, however, that many do.

Bush's appeal to vulgar Americans is his implicit assertion that ideas don't matter: he claims to make decisions by his "gut feeling". It's becoming obvious that we're headed for trouble. Ideas do matter, and DU is especially valuable as a place where ideas are developed, shaped and refined. We are going to get our country back. It will be in rough shape because of what the Bush people have done to it. But Americans will be far more receptive to new directions than they've been in 40 years. Count on it!

[sandnsea]

2. The power of DU

To me it's the power of people to get together and think an issue through and then to have us, as individuals, respond to our own Congressional people and write to the newspapers and participate in our own groups. It's creating a cohesive voice on issues that is the power and I think this power has made a huge difference on Bush's Iraq lies. I wonder what would have happened if nobody had posted the email addresses and bits and pieces of info and news articles that let all of us know what was really going on. So even if they don't read us, we're informing them anyway. IMHO.