Last Sunday, I started this
new weekly series at Kos, Good News Sunday, as a place where all of us can share the good things going on locally that we might not otherwise hear about. As I wrote last week:
With your support and participation, this new weekly series, Good News Sunday, will evolve into a one-stop warehouse for all the good things happening at the local level in the Democratic Party.
It's a simple concept. Each Sunday morning, you'll find this diary here between 8:00 and 9:00am (depending on how my Saturday night goes). I'll start you out with some of the good news of the week from my state, Wisconsin - highlighting Democratic successes, positive trends, polls, candidate news, fundraising and GOTV efforts.
The real fun begins with
your participation in the comments section. Add the good news going on
locally in your neck of the woods - items that may have been overlooked throughout the week. Think of it as "LocalKos," with you as the representative from your area. The theory is that we often get inundated with the "big" national stories, but too seldom are we exposed to the local positives.
Last week, Kossacks deposited good news from Wisconsin, Maryland, New York, Florida, California and Minnesota.
Add your good news here for the week of August 21st -- for local races, state races, or House/Senate contests in your area. Add links where you can, especially if they connect us to your local papers, local Democratic Party pages, or local candidate sites. Suggest actions where appropriate, because you never know when your good news might inspire a fellow Kossack to hop on your issue or your candidate.
As you add to the comments, add to the tag list as well, using the format "Good News (State)". Over time, we'll build a nice "LocalKos" database of information under those tags.
Good News Sunday is an especially good outlet for those of you who don't have time to write a full diary about the local positives, or to re-spotlight things that you wrote about earlier in the week, that may have scrolled off the diary list too fast.
As usual, I'll kick it off with the good news from Wisconsin this week...
1.News came this week that Bill Clinton will visit Wisconsin on October 24th to campaign for incumbent Governor Jim Doyle. As I reported here last week, Doyle leads Republican challenger Mark Green by 10 points in the latest polling, buut nobody in the Doyle campaign is taking this race for granted.
2.As I've written about in prior diaries, Wisconsin remains poised to become the first state in the country to defeat a constitutional marriage amendment. Polls are close, but increasingly, younger voters are getting involved in the effort to defeat the referendum. An excellent article in The Capital Times this week focuses on the youth vote on this issue, and points out how important the young voters are:
* Ages 18-24: 45.2 percent favor amendment, 54.8 percent oppose it
* Ages 25-34: 35.8 percent in favor, 59.7 percent opposed
* Ages 35-44: 46.2 percent in favor, 51.6 percent opposed
* Ages 45-54: 49.6 percent in favor, 45.7 percent opposed
* Ages 55-64: 57.8 percent in favor, 39.7 percent opposed
* Ages 65 and older: 57.5 percent in favor, 35.6 percent opposed
3.On that same topic, Fair Wisconsin - the group working to defeat the ban, is racking up support from hundreds of unlikely people and organizations. Click the link to see the complete of endorsements. I'd blockquote it here, but Kos might not be happy with the amount of bandwidth I'd take up.
4.With the September 12th primary fast approaching, Republicans are starting to eat their own here in Wisconsin. This article may cause you to spit up your morning coffee:
That giant sucking sound is making a political comeback in Wisconsin this year. This time, though, only one job is involved. The job is attorney general of the state of Wisconsin and that giant sucking sound you hear is coming from the campaigns of Republicans J.B. Van Hollen and Paul Bucher.
Eloquence in campaign debate reached historic heights when Van Hollen succinctly summed up Bucher's political style ("You suck, Paul!"), only to be topped by Bucher's masterful retort ("I don't suck!")
...
The only thing left for the candidates to do is to toilet paper each other's yards.
Sucking is a pretty accurate description of the mean-spirited campaigns of both Bucher and Van Hollen for a job that requires higher standards of honesty and integrity than either candidate has demonstrated.
Bold emphasis added by me, because I can.
5.And finally, as you hopefully read in http://www.dailykos.com/... bulldog111's diary yesterday], Wisconsin's only competitive House seat - district 8 - is now labeled by the Evans-Novak Political Report as "Leaning Dem." That's both surprising and exciting, because WI-CD8 is traditionally red. Huge pick up opportunity here, but we'll know a lot more after the 9/12 primary.
That's the good news from Wisconsin this week.
What's going on in your slice of the country?