Six months ago, a group of bloggers who had been producing the “Edwards Evening News Roundup” at Daily Kos created a new community forum to focus on issues and strategies for building the progressive movement. They called it the EENR blog because the EENR “brand” name was already well-known to hundreds of bloggers who considered themselves “Edwards Democrats.”

Since its creation, the EENRblog has become a great source for substantive diaries about issues you may not read much about elsewhere. It’s not a place where people obsess over tracking polls or Barack Obama’s campaign strategy. Diaries about campaigns are more likely to be about electing some of the “more and better Democrats” running for federal or state office.

This past weekend, the editorial team announced that the blog’s name had been changed to the Progressive Blue blog (www.progressiveblue.com):

Hello fellow EENR members –

We wanted you to be the first to know that EENRblog will be undergoing some changes beginning this weekend.

First, we want you to know that in its essence, the blog will remain the same. The reasons we are all here, the agenda that we all support, the need to promote it as well as push to elect More and Better Democrats who will further that agenda in Congress, the community we’ve all built here – these things will remain the same.

However, we will be making a few changes – most of them fairly subtle, and we want to share with you why we decided to make these. You are the community, and we don’t exist without you.

EENRblog originated out of the desire to advance the agenda John Edwards promoted during his campaign.  And just as we all had to deal with disappointment and even some anger at the end of his campaign, we’ve gone through an emotional roller coaster again with John Edwards’ revelation in early August. We decided to let things settle down so we wouldn’t make any rash decisions regarding the blog.

John Edwards gave us the most progressive agenda in years and he was the reason we had all come to know each other. He was the reason things like Universal Health Care and Poverty were even being talked about during this campaign season. We are proud to have been able to work with him to further those issues.  However, we chose to look at the bigger picture:

• Most of us had gotten on board with the Edwards  campaign not because of the man, but because of the issues – the Two America’s speech, etc… We wanted to elect John president because he was  an outspoken champion for those issues. In the bigger picture, the point  of this blog has never been to promote Edwards, but to promote and further  the progressive and populist agenda he had put forth. It’s not about him;  it’s about advocating for the agenda.

• Another part  of the discussion was about political perception and Edwards. Many of us  agree that he is down but not necessarily out; it will take a long time  for him to recover and be politically viable again. If the political  perception of Edwards in general is not good, then it hurts our ability to  promote the agenda for which we fought so hard.

This perception may also hurt us with guest bloggers and prospective candidates – politics is largely based on perception and whether we like or not or agree with it or not – Edwards tainted his brand – and candidates and guest bloggers may not want to risk being associated with him right now.

• Finally, if there are any other shoes left to  drop, it could taint him even further. That could really hurt our ability  to be effective advocates for the agenda. JRE always talked about how it  wasn’t about him, it was about us, the people… It was about the issues… We’re taking him up on that. We’re just taking the Edwards  Agenda and making it the People’s Agenda.

And so, we have decided to make some changes that you will notice over the next couple of days. The blog will retain most of its current layout, but will have a different name and logo with perhaps slightly different coloring and perhaps a new banner along the top. We will be adding a variety of progressive events to the event calendar, and the link colors will change as will the quote in the quote tile.

With this new name and logo, we will also be instituting a new web address, www.progressiveblue.com. We will keep the EENRblog.com address active for a while longer so everyone can still get to the blog if they forget the new name in the beginning.

We wanted to let our most active EENR members know first – give you a heads up on what is coming up and why. The changes are mostly cosmetic in nature; we are the same blog, with the same emphases and the same goals, all the regular columns (and maybe a few new ones), the same wonky nature, and the same love of snark, and we hope you all will still feel right at home, here at Progressive Blue.  

Respectfully,  

The EENR Editorial Board

     now The Progressive Blue Editorial Board

Whether or not you ever supported Edwards for president, I encourage you to bookmark the Progressive Blue blog and join the community there. I guarantee you will learn something every time you read the front page or the recent diary list.

Progressive Blue is also a good place to cross-post any diaries you have written about strong Democratic candidates or issues progressives should be concerned about. For instance, in the past month I have cross-posted diaries about reforming the caucus system, my son’s school encouraging parents to buy Tyson chicken products, and the Environmental Protection Commission’s decision to reject two CAFO applications in Dallas County.

Use this thread to tell us about the blogs you enjoy and find valuable.