The idea that digby appearing for a few seconds in a great commercial designed to drive our most promising block of non-voters, single women, to the polls, somehow makes her responsible for whatever mistakes were made by WVWV is infuriating. If you are one of the people littering her site or her email with trash, please stop.
But I want to talk about something digby has been saying for a while. I'm gonna paraphrase, and not link, because I wanna say it in my words.
We may be looking at tsunami in 08, and it's time to start working to make that happen. And if you don't want to make that happen, then SYFPH.
Moreover, we're looking at a really, really good tsunami, if it happens. Digby always couches her views in quiet optimism, but I think it's way better than that. I was on a conference call with Mark Begich today (SEN-AK) and he sounds confident, on top of the numbers, and ready to take on an 85 year old Ted Stevens who may or may not end the year in jail. Alaska. The last Frontier. Home of the great individualist. Libertarian central. And Pork Central as well. It's gotten so bad that even they're embarrassed.
But it's not just Alaska. We have Delay's seat. We have Hastert's seat. It looks like we have a good shot for two deep south, very red seats; MS-01 and LA-06.
The whole Mountain West is in play. Those folks don't like authoritarians like the DHS. Markos' libertarian democrats are out there.
Check out what TIME says is happening in North Carolina:
A few minutes ago, [Karen Tumulty] talked to Caroline Valand, the executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party:
She got a sense that something important might be happening here in the state last January, when the person who runs their voter files told her he was seeing a surge in Democratic registrations. Valand's first thought: "Well, bless their hearts. They actually think North Carolina is going to matter this year." It turns out these new voters knew more than she did. This is the first real Democratic presidential primary contest North Carolina has seen since 1988, when it was one of the Super Tuesday states. And as of midnight last night, she says, more than 300,000 people in the state had already voted in primary early voting--a number that "smashes every record we've ever had. ... In the last six weeks, it has just completely exploded."
The early voting is running 5:1 Democratic, Valand says, despite the fact that the Republicans have some spirited state and local races on their primary ballot Tuesday. "It's been amazing. The Republican Party actually had a net loss" in early voting, she added.
We've seen this story again and again. While people who need to STFPH have been ragging the other side in the Presidentials, we've been racking up huge turnouts, huge registration numbers, and we've been kicking ass.
Over and over again, Obama and Clinton split the vote inside the 55-45 margin--and both candidates got more votes than McCain. But that doesn't matter. That's only an indicator.
Because the action is downticket, and that's where you can make a difference. Money matters more to Begich than it does to Obama or Clinton.
Your contributions, financial and volunteer, scale way better in Congressional and Senate races. And, frankly, we'll need progressive seats to keep Clinton or Obama honest.
We've got more than four dozen Responsible Challengers who are better Democrats than Steny Hoyer, who will have more impact, if they are elected in large enough numbers, than the Presidential nominee on the occupation, on the environment, on health care and on the restoration of the Constitution.
This can be a sea-change election. A tsunami, if we work it. If we stupidly get caught up in which centrist democrat gets the nomination for president, instead of working to get solid working majorities in the House and Senate, then we've done Karl Rove's work for him.
No more circular firing squads. Listen to digby. Everything is breaking for us. And where it matters is not in the Oval Office. We have two fine candidates who need to be moved by a progressive legislature toward the Democratic wing of the party. We've already seen some of that movement, as they have taken stronger positions on ending the occupation in response to grass roots pressure.
Look, if we don't screw this up, we have the elephant down for the count (it's actually a hippo breakfast in the pic, and yes, I took it not long after sunrise in Botswana). Don't let up. Work the state races. Let's control the Congress. If we do that, the rest will take care of itself.
More. Better. Democrats.
And no more circular firing squads.