DOES MARILYN MUSGRAVE GET A FREE RIDE TO RE-ELECTION NOW THAT ANGIE HAS DECIDED NOT TO RUN?

There are a lot of races across the country for grassroots, anti-war and progressive activists to get involved with. Colorado's 4th CD was a special target for two reasons: one of the worst incumbents anywhere, a wretched homophobic maniac who has never voted in the interests of humanity-- on anything-- since she took office and in the person of Angie Paccione, a truly worthy opponent who would have made an excellent representative of the interests of ordinary people.

Last year 827 Blue America activists donated over $15,000 to Angie's campaign. Over 225,000 votes were cast and only 7,000 separated Angie from Musgrave. W had every reason to hope that 2008 would be a victory for the forces of progressive democracy over the forces of Hatred and Bigotry embodied by the foul Musgrave.

I have no inside information about why Angie dropped out. According to an article about the race in today's Congressional Quarterly "Kyle Saunders, a Colorado State University political scientist who analyzes congressional races, described Paccione as the party’s strongest candidate and said her decision not to run is not great news for Democrats." Instead of a forthright, fighting progressive CO-04 will now have to make due with a moderate establishment insider who is widely viewed as part of the Bush Dog-leaning Salazar machine (i.e.- Republican lite). Better than Musgrave? Absolutely. Worth fighting for? Well... that's a tougher question.

Betsy Markey is unlikely to be the kind of leader progressive nationally are looking for. But she will probably be a semi-dependable vote for core Democratic initiatives and could be a decent representative for CO-04. Blue America will certainly be rooting for her to beat the execrable Musgrave but we'll leave the fundraising to the insiders and machine pols to work out.

We're far more interested in the candidacies of progressives than we are in hack Democrats. Today Sandra from DFA blogged about the latest turn of events in a race we are very much interested in, the primary against Bush Dog Dan Lipinski by Blue America-endorsed candidate Mark Pera. The elder Lipinski, the right-leaning ex-congressman who was able to install his right-leaning shiftless son from Tennessee into the Chicago area congressional seat, is working a scam to help finance his son's tough re-election campaign. Basically, he's using a charitable children's fund to raise money for little Dan. You can help thwart the Lipinskis and defeat an anti-choice, pro-war Bush Dog by helping Mark Pera-- here.

Announcement: Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7:30pm, EDT Rep. Tom Allen (D-ME) will be a guest at Firedoglake, discussing the Iraq occupation on the 5th anniversary of the authorization for the Use of Force which, of course, he opposed-- and still opposes. Come meet this extraordinary congressman, who's running against pathetic rubber stamp Liebermanite Susan Collins.