The Downballot weekly open thread
Delurkers edition! Come introduce yourself!
Welcome to our very first weekly open thread! What a week it’s been! Since this is our first open thread here at The Downballot, we’d like to take the opportunity to invite our readers (old and new) to introduce themselves in the comments. In particular, if you’ve been a reader, but a lurker, now would be a great time to introduce yourself to community in the comments below. We’d love to meet you!
Please note: This weekly open thread is a Democratic presidential primary-free space.
I guess I'll go first! DavidNYC, born and raised New Yorker, lifelong Upper East Sider, perpetually disappointed Mets fan, cocktail enthusiast (making and drinking), and hopeless election nerd. Hello, everyone!
I've been posting as skaje since 2005 on various liberal blogs, some of you might recognize this screenname from good ole SSP, or maybe from evil MyDD, or just from dailykos over the decades, where I can strangely enough pull up my first diary (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2005/5/6/112237/-) and see the earliest electoral observations of my teenage self. I rapidly became obsessed with politics in 2004, but it was after that, and the leadup to the 2006 Dem wave, where I became obsessed with *elections*. Not just the nuts and bolts of individuals campaigning, raising money, and running ads, but trying to understand these macro national dynamics and coalition shifts that all elections seemed swayed by. And then I discovered SSP, where instead of superficial arguments over presidential races (and god, presidential primaries!) people instead cared about tracking a potentially competitive congressional race going under the radar. Been with the community since, through the ups and downs, the good years and bad.
From Hawaii originally, for the longest time I liked to consider myself the Hawaii expert on DKE. Been in Colorado for awhile now. Outside of elections, my main hobby is movies, I'm one of those weirdos still buying them on disc. Physical media forever!