Democrats.com is an independent community of progressive activists who believe the Democratic Party is the best way to bring about progressive political change. We are working to transform the Democratic Party into a more progressive party, just as conservatives turned the Republican Party into a conservative party in the last generation.

Democrats.com is not controlled by the Democratic Party. The official Democratic Party site is http://democrats.org.

Democrats.com members who wish to participate in our message boards should observe the following rules:

• You must generally support President Barack Obama, and you must not misrepresent his positions or actions, smear him, or attack him (1) 
• You must generally support the principles and candidates of the Democratic Party, and you must not misrepresent their positions or actions (2)
• You must support our efforts to build a dynamic and supportive community of progressive activists (3)
• You may not commit or incite criminal acts, post messages that are indecent, impersonate any other person, engage in personal attacks, post fundraising or commercial messages, or collect member names for harassment or any form of unsolicited communication via e-mail or otherwise
• You may not insult our troops - excluding (a) their Commander-in-Chief, (b) his civilian appointees, (c) officers who violate the Geneva Conventions or pursue ineffective or self-destructive military strategies (wherever possible identifying those officers by name or position or incident), and (d) specific soldiers who violate the Geneva Conventions or engage in self-destructive military activities (identifying those soldiers by name or unit or incident).
• You may not advocate violence against political opponents (also known as "eliminationism") or celebrate any physical harm that may befall them
• You should not abuse the forums by starting repetitive or self-promoting threads

Violators of these rules will receive a warning, repeat violators will have their accounts set to "comment-only," (3) and persistent violators will have their memberships revoked.

If you are a victim of any violations, please contact us.

(1) President Obama is the first Democratic president to call himself a progressive. But we recognize he is not as progressive as many of us here at Democrats.com, and we disagree (sometimes strongly) with some of his policies, Senate votes, and appointments. It is within our rules to criticize President Obama for specific actions and to urge him to take more progressive actions. But it is against our rules to misrepresent his actions, smear him, or attack him. If you disagree with an action he takes, please offer specific constructive criticism with your preferred alternative and explain how it could realistically pass Congress - rather than simply attack without offering politically realistic alternatives. The best use of our forums is to intelligently discuss the merits of various alternatives. If you do not cannot support President Obama and accept occasional disappointments like a thoughtful adult, please find another online community to participate in.

(2) This rule was created to create a community of and for Democrats. But during primary campaigns this rule takes on a special meaning: you must be committed to supporting the winner of the Democratic primary, even if (a) that candidate is not your preferred candidate, (b) you disagree with that candidate on issues that are important to you, (c) you don't like some aspect of that candidate's record or personality, and (d) you think that candidate "cannot win." So whenever you harshly criticize a Democratic candidate in a primary, we will ask: are you committed to supporting that candidate if (s)he wins the Democratic nomination? If your answer is no, then Democrats.com is not the right community for you.

(3) There are two issues that fundamentally undermine our efforts to build a supportive community of progressive activists: abortion and Israel/Palestine. Progressives are found on both sides of these issues, and all believe passionately in their positions - so passionately that they adamantly refuse to change their positions. Since debates on these issues result in anger rather than agreement, we remove all threads on these two topics and encourage advocates on both sides to debate them in forums devoted to those issues, such as Belief.net.

(3) "Comment-only" means you can still post comments as replies on existing forum threads, but you cannot create new threads.