You’re supposed to lead with your thesis statement, yes? Well, then: I have decided to run for the open City Clerk position here in Montpelier. As such, assuming I am successful in my race (and I intend to be) I will, in the coming weeks, be handing over the “keys” to Green Mountain Daily to others, and will step back from my role as a local political blogger. I will also be stepping down as the News Editor for The Bridge in Montpelier.

I will continue my syndicated Statehouse column, which has been picked up by at least three papers that I’m aware of. I will also continue blogging at the national level, on politics as well as pop/geek culture at the soon-to-be-launched leftygeek.com. Stay tuned for more on that.

I may well return someday. Never say never, after all, but even if I lose my race, I’ll likely stay away from GMD for a while. It just seems like the right thing to do for a number of reasons.

So over the coming weeks leading up to Town Meeting Day, I’ll be on a GMD farewell tour of sorts, and am liable to post just about anything.

On a personal note, this is no small decision for me.

Six years ago, I read the writing on the wall. Of course by then, it wasn’t too hard; the netroots were transforming politics in the country as a whole, as well as the individual states. And it wasn’t simply blogs, it was the user-driven, decentralized, DailyKos model that gave political blogs that community-building quality which enabled so many regular folk to directly engage with the political elite and the media. It was an opportunity for regular folks to step up and start driving the conversation, instead of being driven by it.

For my part, I saw an opportunity to save many Democratic politicians from themselves. From years of media conditioning, so many Democrats had begun to doubt their own principles, so when the opportunity to act on them came around, they would hesitate – and lose. The DailyKos blog model gave us a vehicle to lead, and demonstrate to these wavering Dems that, if they act on their principles, they make the world a better place AND they win elections.

It also gave us an opportunity to crack into the closed “conventional wisdom” loop of the political media in Vermont – a circle that was getting smaller and smaller – and as such more and more insular – every day. The netroots model offered a way to elbow our way into that closed loop and have a say in forming that conventional wisdom.

So I contacted Jack McCullough, David Waldman (of DailyKos, who at that time was doing online media work for Bernie Sanders) and Lynn Bedell in Windham County to start GMD. Although David later came on board the front page (as Kagro X), he couldn’t help out on the launch. So I reached out to Eddie Garcia (kestrel9000), a regular DailyKos poster with Vermont roots (and who had had a recent, delightfully notorious interview with Vermont GOP firebreather Mark Shepard). So, when Lynn had to step back from the project, GMD launched with myself, Jack and Eddie as the first front pagers.

A major goal in the early days was to build momentum within the state Democratic Party to push impeachment on George W. Bush, but it became a lot more than that. Over the years, we’ve had an impact on more policy debates than I can remember.

Our impact on elections has been even more notable. We hosted the first online debate in Vermont between John Tracy and Matt Dunne in their primary contest for Lt. Governor. We played Dem-cop, putting the kibosh on behind-the-scenes electoral shenanigans within the party. By the 2010 election, we stood as the most efficient way for statewide candidates to reach large numbers of the statewide primary base, and as such, we regularly hosted contributions from not simply the gubernatorial primary candidates, but the other statewide Dems as well. We also helped raise around $36,000 in contributions for the Shumlin campaign on ’10.

Over the years we’ve had participation from officeholders of all stripes – including Progressive, and even the occasional Republican, officeholder.

What we didn’t do, as I’d hoped we would, is help launch a wide, thriving and diverse political blogosphere in the state. There are still only a very few active blogs, and that’s a bummer (meaning no disrespect to my few compadres out there blogging away… I just wish there were a few more of us).

But six years later, we have Democratic supermajorities in the House and Senate, a Democratic Governor, and Dem locks on all three of our DC officeholders. We also have seen the lines blur between the Progressive and Democratic parties – enough so that its easier for both to work together electorally (Anthony Pollina is a DEM officeholder!!)

I’m not saying we did all that – not by a long shot. But we did some of it.

So I’m bailing out when the work gets much, much harder – because now is the era of keeping our Governor and legislature from giving into the easy trap of sliding away from progressive principles.

And I don’t have to tell any of you how tough that is – and how much creativity it’s going to take. Frankly, it’s a task that makes the last few years look like a cakewalk.

But the crew I’m leaving behind is up to it. Along with Jack and kestrel, there’s BP, Julie, Nanuq, Sue, Maggie, JD, Caoimhin, jvwalt, Liane, Chris and others.

And they’ll maintain a platform that regularly does what would have been unthinkable 6-10 years back, when the Democratic Party had settled into a hierarchical stasis – it criticizes. We pat our electeds on the back when they deserve it, jump up and down and yell at them when they deserve that, and the old paradigms of retaliation and control that used to exist within that party hierarchy have been broken down. Front Pagers are no longer punished behind the scenes for publicly criticizing their “leaders” (yes, I have stories – I’ll tell them some day), and those leaders even return to post and interact with the community after they receive criticism.

That’s because they realize that we can disagree – even passionately – but still work together to make the world a better place. In some cases it’s taken a while to remind them of that, but message received.

On a personal note, I’m gonna say something goopy, here. I’ve thought about what’s kept me in this business this long, while so many others flame out. I think it’s a question of what motivates me – or any blogger. The internet comment-sphere can be an ugly place, as you all know. And also, as you know, I’ve been a bit of a lightning rod and have drawn more than my share of crazy stalkers.

But the stalkers and the angry flameouts always have one thing in common; they all seem to really, really dislike people. I daresay some of them seem to hate people. Whether that’s because they feel they’re better than everyone else, or they’re angry at the world for not recognizing what they believe is their genius, I don’t know.

But you just can’t maintain this kind of thing if you’re motivated by hate. It burns you right out.

As grumpy and grousy and frustrated as I get, if there’s one thing that’s always been true about me, it’s the fact that I love people. I’m very Star Trek that way. Not just individual people, the whole flippin human race. Sure we’re screwed up, but for every way we’re screwed up, there are a dozen ways we’re freaking amazing. There’s nobility in even the worst of us, somewhere.

I always figure the best thing we can do while we’re here is to try and leave the world a better place than it was when we got here. If people are a “cancer” or universally “stupid,” that’s impossible. Worse than impossible, if you really believe that, there’s nothing to stop you from just ransacking the place while you’re here – why wouldn’t you, if all your fellow humans suck?

“Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down” as Captain Reynolds said.

And if that’s not geeky enough for you right there, keep an eye out for the launch of leftygeek.com…