(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . We're celebrating the 20th anniversary of Daily Kos Elections today! [1] ['Daily Kos Staff'] Date: 2023-10-19 Believe it or not—and I really cannot—today marks the 20th anniversary of Daily Kos Elections, the site that began life as the Swing State Project. And what a remarkable journey it’s been. Twenty years ago, I was a first-year law student who’d just made the difficult decision to give up a position on the Howard Dean campaign to instead return to school. But I was still seeking an outlet for my political passions, and I was also looking to educate myself about the swing states in the upcoming presidential election after flying almost blind in 2000. Inspired by a site I’d come across a year earlier called Daily Kos—and its founder, Markos Moulitsas—I decided I’d create my own blog, whose archives still live on at their original URL. I didn’t think it would last, though: After that dispiriting 2004 race, I thought I’d retire SSP. But the first in a long line of extraordinary collaborators, Tim Tagaris, convinced me to keep going and refocus the site on downballot elections. It proved to be a life-changing decision. SSP began to attract an exceptionally incisive community of amateur analysts like myself who wanted to put aside pointless political debates and instead focus on understanding what’s going to happen at the ballot box. Though busy with my legal career, I was able to keep SSP going thanks to the exceptional partners who joined the team over the years—all of us volunteers: James Lambert, Trent Thompson, Jeff C., and David Jarman. And because of this team effort, Markos took notice and, in 2011, decided to beam the Swing State Project up to the mothership, a site-within-a-site to be known as Daily Kos Elections. There we joined forces with fellow nerds Steve Singiser and Arjun Jaikumar, and more were to enlist in the coming years: Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Daniel Donner, David Beard, and Matt Booker. After I left the law behind (phew!) to run DKE full-time, the site firmly found its place in the progressive ecosystem, providing unmatched analysis and data with the ultimate goal of helping Democrats win elections. Along the way, I’d like to think we’ve helped change politics for the better. Our calculations of presidential election results by congressional districts became the new gold standard. We reshaped the way people think about special elections. And we helped make Jon Ossoff a household name. But the thing that has always kept me and this crew going is our readers. The community here remains as vibrant (and funny!) as ever, and the gratitude so many folks have conveyed to us for our work makes us all want to spring out of bed each morning and keep doing it again and again. That’s why we’ve kept growing this whole time, capped by the launch of The Downballot podcast. And I gotta say, despite the dizzying ups and downs of American politics, we’ve had a lot of fun doing this. To mark the occasion, I’ve gathered some highlights: It’s a testament to this site that so many of the folks I mentioned above are still active members of our team after all this time, and our alumni remain DKE4Life. I hope all of us—staff, contributors, commenters, and readers—can all keep doing this for a very long time to come. Here’s to the next 20 years! P.S. If you’ve valued our work and would like to help us keep going, you can click here to make a donation to support Daily Kos Elections. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/19/2200387/-We-re-celebrating-the-20th-anniversary-of-Daily-Kos-Elections-today?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/