I hope you'll join me in Las Vegas!
This is my first post on Daily Kos and I'm looking forward to engaging the blogger community in a discussion about how we get this country back on the right track. I hope to share my ideas but also pick up ideas from the community.
I believe we have to not only point out the failure of the Bush administration on everything from the war to fiscal policy to its lack of basic competence on the delivery of key govt services -- but also lay out an agenda of how we will do differently. I've found a real yearning everywhere I've been about how Democrats can turn their frustration with what's happening (or not happening as is often the case) in Washington DC into specific policy prescriptions that can produce results.
The energy I sense around the country is amazing. People are ready to step up. We recognize what the country needs is not incremental change. In areas like restoration of America's positive stature in the world, linking energy policy to climate change, ensuring America's competitive position in an inter-connected world, and enacting a sound fiscal policy-- all these areas need transformative change. My hope is that thru interacting with the online community, and thru the more traditional channels like our website, I can lay out my ideas on what the transformative change would look like.
We've got a lot of work to do to elect Democrats throughout the nation in the upcoming elections. This year, I have been traveling the country campaigning for Democrats to take the Congress (in the last few weeks for Francine Busby in California, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, and Harold Ford in Tennessee, and later this week Leonard Boswell in Iowa). I've been sharing some of my experiences from Virginia on how, even with a 2 to 1 Republican legislature, we were able to have a honest debate about finances, make significant (measurable) progress in education, and finally start to crack the code on bringing knowledge jobs to rural communities. At the end of the day, after four years, we had redefined what it meant to be a Democrat, and Virginia is moving forward.
I've got a lot of ideas I want to share, and I'm looking forward to meeting a lot of you at the Yearly Kos.