I'm one of the grassroots volunteers in the fight we've been waging to take back our country. The electoral battles we're fighting now are prepping us for 2008. Will we have the experience and fortitude to win this time around, or will we be defeated like the last generation was in 1968?
I've been following three elections this year that demonstrate how we are succeeding with our democratic technologies where the last generation with their mimeographs failed. These are three grassroots versus party establishment races and they started with Christine Cegelis and her strong showing against Duckworth in Illinois. Cegelis narrowly trailed with 41 percent of the vote to Duckworth's 44 percent.
I count this as a grassroots win because it shows we are evenly matched with the first-time candidates establishment Dems are trying to field. We are competitive and they've been doing this far longer than we have. The election was so close that Cegelis could have won if Illinois had primary runoffs for candidates who didn't receive at least 50% of the vote. Even the blog Tzars were impressed with this "grassroots win", and I was happy to see them renounce their thrones to rejoin the netroot masses.
The second grassroots candidate I've had my eye on is Jerry McNerney. McNerney was challenged in the Democratic primary by Steve Filson, a DCCC and Nancy Pelosi backed candidate. You'd think the Washington elite would have wanted to have a wind energy expert in Congress, but that wasn't the case. McNerney and his volunteers worked their butts off to beat Filson who received only 12,744 votes compared to McNerney's 23,598 votes.
McNerney's victory over the Washington insider financed candidate was a clear win for the progressive grassroots within our party. Throughout these two races I was itching to find a primary race where a progressive candidate would take on one of these Washington Insiders. I kept bringing up Diane Feinstein's name amongst my friends in California, but the response was only grumbling about how it would be a waste of energy to fight incumbent Democrats who aren't progressive when we need the Democratic headcount to take back Congress.
Hope wasn't springing eternal in my heart as I resolved myself to a Democratic Congress continuing to hurt working Americans because the congress critters were too busy voting the way their big money puppet masters pulled the strings. I worried that if we're too busy challenging Republicans, when are we going to have time to start changing our Democratic Party? I didn't want 1968 to happen all over again in 2008.
It didn't take long for a glimmer of hope to be restored. I was ecstatic when Ned Lamont stood up to confront the issue of who represents the Democratic Party. That glimmer has turned into a bursting sunrise of hope by Lamont's competitive challenge to Lieberman. The Democratic Grassroots has already won just by being able to run competitively against incumbent Democrats. Democratic incumbents be advised, "It's our party and we can vote you out if we want to." Ned Lamont and his supporters are living proof of that.
Whether Lamont wins or loses the election, we're on the right path to winning back our party and our country in 2008 if we keep doing what we're doing.
Eternally Vigilant,
Thom K in LA