Rick Weiland

Just so you know, Peter Stavrianos served as Chief of Staff for South Dakota Senators George McGovern, Jim Abourezk and Tom Daschle from 1962-1995. Stavrianos holds a BA and MA in political science from Harvard and UC Berkeley respectively. He's been retired since 2005 but served as an occasional adviser to Rick Weiland's campaign. This is his analysis:Most Democrats ran hard toward the muddled middle in the 2014 elections.

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.

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.

Mike Rounds has surrounded himself with crooks who have helped make him wealthyIf you follow DWT with any regularity you weren't taken by surprise when the DSCC and the Beltway pundits who take their marching orders from the party committees discovered South Dakota's Senate race last week.

Mark Warner, not really homelessThe two richest Members of Congress are both House Republicans, career criminal Darrell Isis (net worth: $357 million) and Texas wing nut Michael McCaul, who got rich by marrying th

It took long enough— and let’s hope it isn’t too little/too late— but Harry Reid and Guy Cecil finally responded to the growing anger, primarily from Democratic senators and donors, and have let the DSCC get to work in South Dakota. Above is their first ad against one of the three Republicans, Mike Rounds (the GOP Establishment favorite), being going up against Rick Weiland. DSCC polling shows its a winnable race.

Ryan Casey is a 2001 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and a 2010 graduate of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute at Georgetown University. He is Chairman of the Lincoln County Democratic Party in Sioux Falls, SD, and served as Chairman of South Dakota's delegation to the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

Blue America planned to run a 60 second radio spot statewide in South Dakota based on the “Hit The Road, Joop” song (above). But the radio stations refused to take the ad. OK, we’ve faced that in every election cycle. This time we turned to Google. The idea is to get as many South Dakota voters as possible to listen to the song. The deal Google gave us has brought us over 100,000 impressions since October 2 and we only get charged when someone listens to at least 30 seconds of the song.

This morning The Economist published a Broderesque story about Georgia reactionary John Barrow, The Loneliest Man In Congress. “Will 2014,” they ask, “spell doom for the last white House Democrat in the Deep South?” I guess it depends how you define Deep South. Apparently North Carolina, Florida and Texas aren’t deep enough, at least not viewed from a British perspective.

Always the fount of Beltway conventional wisdom, the Washington Post's Fix headline parroted exactly the messaging the DSCC and NRCC want to push: These five races will decide control of the Senate.