Blog: Living Liberally

Karl Rove would "like to learn a little more about that Drinking Liberally group." Max Cleland, former Democratic Senator from Georgia, "indentified with ... Drinking Liberally."

On Thursday, William Beutler attended the Yahoo! conference "Citizen 2.0: Radically Rethinking Democracy in the Political Age," which showed a video that mentioned Drinking Liberally. In their subsequent keynotes, both Rove and Cleland referenced the clever name which had caught their attention.

I visited Des Moines, Iowa for the first time last weekend to attend the Drinking Liberally national conference, a weekend of planning and strategy for leaders of chapters around the country. It was terrific to meet such dedicated, energetic organizers from Reading, Pennsylvania to Lafayette, Indiana to Salt Lake City and many more.

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At the recent Yearly Kos convention, Laughing Liberally comedians reprised their role from last year opening for the keynote speakers. But the best moment for Laughing Liberally's comedians was at the Barack Obama breakout session after the candidate forum, when Baratunde was called on to ask a question (about coal; Baratunde was disappointed by the answer), introduced himself and his Laughing Liberally affiliation to huge cheers and applause from the room, and afterward, met the Senator, who said, "Apparently, you’re somebody I need to know."

I wish I'd taken this picture. I especially love the person taking the same picture with their cameraphone at the bottom of the frame.

The Daily Show, in its thoughtful and mature coverage last night of the CNN/YouTube debate, interviewed several members of Drinking Liberally at their debate watching party.

I have an article in TomPaine.com, the progressive journal of ideas, talking about Drinking Liberally and its many sister projects and how they draw people into greater political activism, in a tradition dating back to George Washington, Sam Adams, John Hancock, and the site's inspiration, Tom Paine.

Amie Loyer, host of Drinking Liberally Nashville, sent this to her chapter's list after the election. It's quite possibly the best articulation of why making politics fun and social is so important.

My friends, we need to have a party tonight.

Whether you realize it or not, you did something big and important when you added your email to this list, or came to see us for the first time. That was the first step in your decision to learn more, to reach out to other people, to challenge the conventional wisdom we all swim in that says politics isn't real life.

We're asked, fairly often, what good a group like DL can do when it's "just" social. We're not party-affiliated. We're prohibited from endorsing or disavowing candidates and ballot initiatives. Wouldn't we be so much more effective, the argument goes, if we just did more?

One flaw in that logic is the presumption that all of us who care about our country and its direction are in a common place in our political journeys, and in our awareness. That's just not true: most of our members say they weren't all that interested in politics before they got involved with DL, and now they can't wait to find out more.

Another flaw is that by being 'social,' we're devaluing direct action. That, too, isn't correct: by bringing together members of disparate groups, people are able to make even more connections and have even more opportunities to volunteer, canvass, support, raise awareness.

But the biggest flaw of all is that the group doesn't do anything. On the contrary, the group does what may be the most important thing of all: it allows ordinary people like us to integrate political awareness into the fabric of our lives. It gets us used to talking and thinking about these issues. It normalizes politics without asking us to drink anybody's Kool-Aid (just beer!). And it does that to such an extent that people who had no political awareness at all a year ago are now convincing their co-workers to change their votes. You're phone-banking. You're registering people to vote. You're volunteering. You're running for office, or considering a run. You're not being silent any more.

So thank you, all of you, for taking that first step. Tuesday didn't get all of us everything we wanted, but we did get change. Congratulations. It can be said that our country started in a bar, and we'll take it back from a bar.

Working Assets commissioned some people affiliated with Laughing Liberally and The Tank to make a comedic video about political corruption. We brought the hilarious Bush impersonator James Adomian to New York City.

It seems President Bush is on a personal mission of sorts, to understand why his good friends keep getting sent to jail. You'll have to wait to see the final video, but along the way he stopped at Congressman Charlie Rangel's district office and interviews the (real) Congressman.

James has an amazing ability not only to act and sound and speak like George W. Bush, but to do it unscripted - making up Bushisms on the spot and relevant to any subject. Rangel was almost as funny as James, and biting - at one point he says "while you're over there in California visiting Randy Duke Cunningham in jail, you might want to make a reservation for some space for yourself." He's clearly very eager for the possibility of retaking the majority in the House and getting himself on one of those panels that will be sending subpoenas up Pennsylvania Avenue.

After the interview, President Bush toured Harlem, meeting some of the locals (people Bush isn't very accustomed to talking to), seeing the Apollo Theatre ("that's where the space program got started") and buying a giro from a street vendor ("you're doing a heckuva job, vendy").