Crashing the Gate

For the Media

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For Immediate Release
August 22, 2006

Contact: Jon-Mikel Gates, (802)295-6300, ext. 111, jgates@chelseagreen.com

KICKING THE DEMOCRATS INTO ACTION!

The Democratic Party is gaining ground every day. In the newly-released paperback of their book Crashing the Gate, DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas and netroots architect Jerome Armstrong lay out the blueprint for how progressives are creating a people-powered revitalization of the Democratic Party.

Armstrong and Moulitsas know what they’re talking about. No pie-in-the-sky academic theory here—they’ve been in the political trenches, they’ve worked the campaigns, and they’ve seen what progressives can do to win elections. Grassroots and netroots activism delivers elections for candidates savvy enough to embrace them: witness the victory of Ned Lamont over entrenched Washington politician Senator Joseph Lieberman.

Virtually unknown in Connecticut prior to his candidacy, Lamont relied heavily on local forces; in-state bloggers such as My Left Nutmeg and Connecticut Blog helped galvanize a core group of supporters and generate the buzz that pushed him ahead of Senator Lieberman. As his netroots campaign gained momentum on the state level, prominent blogs such as DailyKos propelled Lamont into the national spotlight.

In Crashing the Gate, Armstrong and Moulitsas lay the groundwork for the remarkable changes taking place in the Democratic Party. They expose the corrupt, good-old-boys institutions that were simultaneously destroying the Democratic Party and building up the Republican powerbase. Drawing on their experiences spearheading the innovative campaign of Howard Dean in 2004, Crashing the Gate is the people-power handbook. Everyday Americans are fed up and ready to take back their party—the authors of Crashing the Gate are leading the way. The message: Only America (the American people, everyday USA) can save America.

The ideas are catching on in traditionally Democratic institutions “Markos and Jerome have it right in Crashing the Gate,” says Gerald W. McEntee, International President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “Progressives need to change the way we do business if we want to confront and destroy the daily right wing assault on our values. And that’s exactly what we’re doing: empowering local activists, unabashedly articulating our values and recognizing that our movement is bigger than any one person or group. The future of people-powered politics looks bright.”

Jerome Armstrong, a pioneer of the political blogosphere, founded one of the first political blogs, MyDD.com, in 2001. An architect of the netroots strategy that used blogs and meetups for Howard Dean’s campaign, Jerome works as an internet strategist for advocacy organizations and political campaigns with his company, Netroots.com. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Markos Moulitsas served in the U.S. Army for three years and later earned two bachelors degrees from Northern Illinois University and a law degree from Boston University. After moving to California to work in the tech industry, Markos started DailyKos.com in May 2002. His blog has had a meteoric rise and now gets more than a million unique visitors each day, making it one of the most popular blogs in the nation. Markos lives in Berkeley, California.

AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2006 | PAPERBACK | $12.95 | 1-933392-41-X | 5 3/8 X 8 1/4 , 200 PAGES