As you probably know, Barack Obama's campaign has set a goal of reaching 1.5 million donors by the time Indiana and North Carolina vote on Tuesday. According to the (yes, currently updating) counter on the Obama website, there have been 1,485,001 unique donors to our Obama campaign. This includes around 1000 new donors in the last twelve hours, a pace that is not quite enough to get us over the hump.

[UPDATE: 200 new donors in the first hour! Keep it up!]

Maybe you've been waiting for the nomination process to end, or money has been tight and you've been waiting for that tax refund check to come in. Believe me, I understand and sympathize... but if you're not yet a donor, there's no time like the present to make your voice heard. Reaching the 1.5 million mark this weekend will get attention in the media and can help win Obama crucial news cycles heading into Tuesday's primaries.

This is not what I should be doing on this Thursday night in Japan. I should not be sitting here at the computer writing semi-meta diaries and waiting for Kossacks to wake up and smell their Thursday morning coffee back home in the USA.

I should be scanning newspaper classifieds for a new job, as I was downsized this week. I should be helping my girlfriend look for her new job, as she is out of work at the end of the month. But this one time, as a Democrat who happens to be an Obama supporter, and even as one who has grown to strongly dislike the Clinton campaign, I think something needs to be said.

We need to stop harping on the deep flaws in Hillary's campaign and get back to progressive politics.

Karl Rove has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal today purporting to identify "new vulnerabilities" in the Obama campaign. This thinly-veiled attack piece picks up on the same thing that many Kossacks have noted: Obama integrated a large part of the John Edwards platform into his Tuesday-night victory speech in Houston.

But will any of Rove's attacks stick? Not likely.

From the Iowa caucuses through the South Carolina primary, and into Super Tuesday (California results), it was a big story: turnout for the Democrats was off the charts. Democratic turnout even managed to rival that of Republicans in races that weren't supposed to count, and sometimes both Obama and Clinton outpaced the Republican frontrunners.

But this is no longer January. While continuing to get new people involved and excited about the Democratic process is a great thing, we need to stop counting our chickens before November. I've seen several comments today indicating that our turnout lead is still something to celebrate. However, comparing Democratic turnout to Republican turnout has lost its meaning. No more resting on our laurels, I say.