Blue America

This week the DCCC is having a series of meetings to introduce their favored candidates to incumbents, lobbyists and other DCCC supporters. Tonight they're throwing a big dinner at an event space for lobbyists and both political parties, the Oracle Townhouse on D Street.

For a candidate to get a Blue America endorsement, we try to get to know them down to the core of their being. What we're not looking for is some phony politician willing to tell us what they think we want to hear on any set of issues.

Route 99, the Golden State Highway, splits off from the 5 Freeway just south of Bakersfield in southern California and stretches north to include a straight path through the Central Valley-- including all of CA-16 and all of CA-10, way into the north where it merges with the 5 again at Red Bluff.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 09, 2007LIVE GRIFFITH PARK FIRE BLOGGING AT DOWN WITH TYRANNYthe green on the upper left is all charred nowYesterday I was so busy excoriating Chris Carney for lying to me about his position on equality when he wanted Blue America support, that I didn't pay any attention to anything else.

This week, we sent our final letter out to the Blue America members. People sometimes ask me how to become a member. That's easy: contribute-- anything, even just one dollar, to any Blue America candidate on any Blue America page, and voilà!, you're a member. This week's letter was more than just a thank you and Merry Christmas note-- although, yes, thank you and Merry Christmas.

For our final push, Blue America ran independent expenditures in 4 races, two for Senate seats and two in House races. When Adelson and his slimy allies jumped into the CA-33 race with a million dollars worth of racist smear against Ted Lieu, we decided to reach likely voters with a full page ad in the L.A. Times, which we think has worked very well. Early vote returns from Democrats started spiking very sharply as soon as the ad ran.

This is the full page ad Blue America is running today in The Times, a response to over half a million dollars of garbage ads Sheldon Adelson and his family and cronies have thrown into CA-33 against Ted Lieu and on behalf of a random Republican they're running.If you'd like to help Ted's Get Out The Vote efforts, you can do that here. If you'd like to help Blue America re-run the ad on Monday... you can do that here. More important than either action-- vote next Tuesday...

Things can only get better for the Democrats after this asshole steps downOne week from today is election day. Are you counting down? The Blue America strategy has been to see if we could elect some solid progressives to Congress. Once Pelosi reappointed Steve Israel to the DCCC, it was immediately obvious that the Democrats would have ZERO chance to take back the House.

Digby, John and I did not expect to send this note out today. We planned a sabbatical until after the first quarter rush was over Tuesday. But… we got an offer we couldn't refuse-- and one I hope you won't be able to either. As you probably already have figured out, we feel that Shenna Bellows, the 39 year old former executive director of Maine's ACLU, is our idea of a perfect candidate.

Dennis Kucinich congratulating Patrick Hope on his straw poll win in Arlington last weekIt makes sense that Rob and Patrick won. Both have strong teams and both have won elections in the past and understand how to communicate effectively with voters. Both teams were in it to win from the first day and both teams sent out numerous, well-crafted e-mails and worked the social media outlets to turn out their voters.