GOOD NEWS FROM COLORADO: ANGIE! ANGIE! ANGIE!

General Wes Clark campaigning with Angie

There seems to be something that the Inside the Beltway corporate type Democrats-- the non-values careerists-- seemed to have learned from 2006. They're finally paying attention to Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy because... it worked. And what it shows is that Democrats can and dowin in districts that have been abandoned to the Republicans by the clueless non-values careerists who managed, in Terry McAuliffe's time, to grab control of the Democratic Party. Beltway "professional" Democrats like McAuliffe and Rahm Emanuel don't embrace or even understand grassroots Democratic values and they don't know how to fight Republicans. They only know how to fight against progressives and they know how to fight against grassroots Democrats.

They were shocked to see grassroots, non-Insider candidates like Carol Shea-Porter (NH), John Hall, (NY) Jerry McNerney (CA), Nancy Boyda KS), Paul Hodes (NH), and Dave Loebsack (IA) win "Republican" seats that were written off the insiders. And even more shocking was to see how close other grassroots Democrats came to knocking off entrenched Republican incumbents-- with virtually no help from the DCCC. A few examples:

Darcy Burner (WA-08) nearly took out Reichert with less than 7,000 separating the out of over 250,000 cast
Larry Kissell (NC-08) came within 350 votes of beating Hayes
Angie Paccione (CO-04) nearly beat Musgrave with 43% against her 46%
Gary Trauner (WY) held Cubin to a 48/48% virtual tie with only 1,000 votes separating them
Charlie Brown (CA-04) nearly beat Doolittle with 46% against the incumbent's 49%
Victoria Wulsin (OH-2) almost took out the contemptible Mean Jean Schmidt with 49%
Eric Massa (NY-29) almost beat Kuhl with 48%
Phil Kellam (VA-02) came close to beating Drake with 49%
Tessa Hafen (NV-03) almost beat Porter with 47% against his 48%
Linda Stender (NJ-07) came close to beating Ferguson with 48% against his 49%
Dan Maffei (NY-25) came very close to beating Walsh with 49%
Mary Kilroy (OH-15) came within 1,100 votes of beating Pryce

All of these candidates are poised for victories in 2008. But instead of rallying around these and other Democrats who now have high name recognition and a real comfort level with the voters, careerist type Dems, some backed by the very worst elements of Inside the Beltway hackdom think they can waltz into the district and take over where last year's "amateur" challenger left off. Rahm Emanuel and Ellen Tauscher tried that on McNerney in 2006-- after he had come close to beating Pombo in 2004-- and their well-financed "professional" shill was completely trounced by the grassroots. The Emanuel, Tauscher and other Insiders said they appreciated McNerney's energy but that he was too progressive, too anti-war, too non-Establishment. He kicked their candidate's ass from one side of the district to the other and then went on-- regardless of Emanuel's attempt to sabotage his race-- to give progressive, grassroots America one of it's most important and satisfying victories, sending Dick Pombo to a lobbying job with a margin of over 10,000 votes.

Although Emanuel is no longer contaminating the DCCC and Chris Van Hollen has vowed to maintain a hands off policy in terms of primaries, many of our best candidates are facing challenges from dubious Democrats who think it looks easy. One just got a great lesson that she needs to think about carefully. Angie Paccione is beloved of the grassroots in her part of Colorado. She held Musgrave down to under 50% and is capitalizing on her experience to put together an even stronger campaign this year. Ken Salazar is one of the more reactionary senators on the Democratic side of the aisle and his brother, John, in the House isn't any better. Senator Salazar has a staffer, a Betsy Markey, going up against Angie.

Although the Salazar machine is firmly behind her, many Democrats, especially the grassroots variety that nearly won it for Angie last time in the 4th district, are disgusted. Today the second quarter FEC figures came out. Angie raised $112,000. The Salazar Machine candidate raised $36,000. (She also lent her campaign $25,000, a pretty sad statement of non-support from the district.) This will be McNerney vs Filson all over again with Salazar playing the role of Tauscher.

Tomorrow morning we'll have Darcy Burner joining us for a live blog session at Firedoglake at 12 noon Mountain Time (11am PT and 2pm EST). We can hear what she has to say about the ex-Republican that announced today that he's officially announcing on Tuesday (as a Democrat) that he's running against Darcy in the primary. It's a waste of time and a waste of money. Similarly other opportunists who are sniffing around races are pestering Eric Massa and Victoria Wulsin. All 4 of these candidates can win in 2008 and all 4 are on the Blue America ActBlue page (open now).