Democrats.com is an independent community of Democratic Party and progressive activists. We proudly support the Democratic National Committee (http://democrats.org) and its chairman Howard Dean, but they do not control us in any way.

Democrats.com was launched at the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles by two veteran Democratic consultants Bob Fertik and David Lytel. (Lytel left at the end of 2002 to launch ReDefeatBush.com.)

Our vision was to create the leading news and community Web site for the progressive base of the Democratic Party, in order to lead the fight against the radical right and the Republican Party. We called ourselves the "Aggressive Progressives."

We quickly fulfilled our vision after the polls closed on Election Day 2000 and reports streamed in from Florida about the infamous "butterfly ballot" and the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of Democratic voters. Long before the word "blogging" was invented, we posted real-time news from Florida and around the country about the grassroots effort to "count every vote."

When the U.S. Supreme Court threw out 175,000 Florida ballots that had never been counted, we worked with the Congressional Black Caucus to write the brief they used to challenge Florida's electors on January 6, 2001 - a scene that was made famous at the start of Fahrenheit 9-11.

From 2000 to 2004, Democrats.com published the first and only daily news service by and for Democratic activists. Each newsletter contained roughly 20 links to the most important stories published that day, both in the mainstream media and on progressive Web sites. We also organized online and offline campaigns on important issues like opposing the invasion of Iraq and impeaching George W. Bush for lying and war crimes. For more details, read our History.

On Election Day 2004, Democrats.com switched to a blog format. We now serve as many as 260,000 pages per week, which makes us one of the most popular Web sites for Democrats. Our e-mail list of subscribers and supporters totals over 350,000, which makes us one of the most powerful and effective Democratic activist groups.