I found this non-partisan poll analysis website http://www.electoral-vote.com/ during the 2004 cycle. Also, this one http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ really breaks down the individual races and still has primary results posted for those interested. Either should be good resources for us.   Read More »

Fellow Democrats, I ask this question for a very good reason. Exactly, who is reading this post? Those of us who post here on a regular or semi-regular basis know there are about a hundred, or so, of us that fall into one category or the other. We average anywhere between five and twenty posts per day. Most are fairly innocuous. We’ll give our take on the news of the day, bash the Republicans as they bash us on their web sites, and forge relatively strong professional respect and bonds with our fellow bloggers. Of course, we do not agree all the time. Someone once said politics is like ordering pizza for a large group of people. While you’ll agree that your proverbial pizza will have a crust and cheese, all the other toppings are open for debate and you’ll never be able to make everyone happy.

But who else is reading this post? The DNC, to the best of my knowledge, does not post statistics relative to the amount of visitors to this website. I do not see a counter of any sort. Therefore, we bloggers don’t know exactly. And that bothers me.

If we knew that this was a private access blog, that no one could read this without an access code(s) that would be one thing. We wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, have to worry about what we said under those circumstances because, it would only be us here or it would have little or no bearing in the real world just like the conversations you have with your friends or loved ones. But that is not the case.

Before I go any farther, let me state for the record that I, or any of the rest of us bloggers, to the best of my knowledge, are not fully sanctioned members of the DNC. We are simply here to express our views and support the Democratic Party and or its ideals. We created our accounts and, to date, the moderators have not sent us away into the vast depths of cyberspace. Having said that, we are posting on the web log of the Democratic National Committee and that should carry some responsibility.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, perception is everything. In a nation where over half of the electorate does not know their two U.S. senators and over 75% do not know their House Representative, is the average person who comes here really going to distinguish us bloggers from the DNC? I think not. For those that disagree, go watch a segment of “Jaywalking” on the Tonight Show or listen to Glenn Beck’s Moron Trivia. Granted, they air the worse case scenarios however, I would point out that these people displayed have the same right to vote in the United States that you and I do. It’s darn scary, isn’t it?

Therefore, I would ask my fellow, regular DNC bloggers to be mindful of what you post over the course of the four months, or so. The primaries are over. And while the General Election is not scheduled until November, every vote counts. Before you click that Post button you should ask yourself two questions. Could this post get any potential votes? How many potential votes will this post lose? Like it or not, agree with it or not, we DNC bloggers are the de facto faces of the DNC to the lurkers who do not comprehend that we are ordinary citizens like them posting on one of millions of web logs. It is my recommendation that, when we get fed up with President Bush’s latest assault on reason or Vice-President Cheney’s latest attempt to subjugate the planet, we vent our anger on a partisan blog such as DailyKOS or Atrios. I have an account at the Politico. They are more fitting places to call an a**hole an a**hole. Here at the DNC blog, we should try to take the same tact that our elected leaders do. We can respect the offices without respecting the office holder. We should show some civility to our fellow Americans, when deserved. Trolls deserve no civility because they do not give such.

In the four years that I have posted here, I have found that most of my fellow Democratic bloggers are thoughtful, intelligent people who want more than anything else, a better America to leave to their progeny. That is the goal of every decent American citizen. It would appear that half of us have one way to accomplish that and half have another. Such is the nature of politics. We settle our disagreements on strategy in the voting booths across this great nation of ours. And because we settle those agreements in the voting booth, every vote counts.

Today, I challenge my colleagues to take their political commentary to a new level. Let’s leave behind the cheap shots and name-calling and replace it with the thoughtful, insightful dialogue we are capable of. Let’s give new bloggers the benefit of the doubt and engage them in a respectful manner until they actually say something that is not respectful. And let’s kick the snot out of the GOP in 2008! After all, the world is watching…

In the extended, you will find the text of my speech in Martinsville, VA on Monday. Tom Perriello announced a 22 city Economic Revival tour to help restore jobs to the Southside.

Hope you like it.   Read More »

Tom Perriello the Democratic candidate for the 5th Congressional District (currently held by Republican Virgil Goode), will make an announcement from the Historic City Hall steps. The announcement is expected to about a 7 point program to revitalize the rural area. Speaking on behalf of CWA Local 2277 will be your truly, as well as some local people affected by NAFTA and outsourcing of jobs. 5th District Democrats need to come out and support Tom and his campaign. Perriello chose the Martinsville-Henry County area to make his economic announcement because this area has been the hardest hit. The race between Goode and Perriello has been declared a targeted race by the DCCC and has attracted much attention. Visit www.perrielloforcongress.com to read more about this dynamic individual.

I'm not advocating anarchy, nor am a talking about a political uprising across the country. What I am asking is this:

"How much are Americans willing to take before they rebel either in an armed coup or a non-violent coup against the status quo?"

Four points:
1) Our government is corrupt and supressing the middle and lower class working people.
2) Business is corrupt and suppressing the middle and lower class working people.
3) Our rights are being trampled on almost daily.
4) Media supports the above by ignoring it.

These are the very reasons that colonists revolted against the British empire.

Thoughts please.

Read extended for this article by the AP....makes me sick.   Read More »

This letter appears in todays issue of the Martinsville Bulletin.
Read the extended post for my reply.
Thanks all!
Peace

Save the United States from becoming a Third World country.
Both of the (presumptive) presidential candidates are against drilling for oil in the Anwar province in Alaska or drilling for natural gas off our shores. I think if we held back contributions to their campaigns until they changed their minds on this issue, they may get the message.
If the policies of the United States are not changed, we may quickly become a Third World country. If the citizens of the United States do not persuade our political leaders to change their minds, we may go broke and be deeply indebted to China.
We have billions of cubic feet of untapped natural gas, which could be used to power autos, trucks and other machinery. And we have huge deposits of oil in Alaska. But our own political leaders are refusing to let us develop these resources.
The leaders of the U.S. House and Senate will not let this issue come to the floor for a vote. Everyone should be putting pressure on their congressmen and senators to let this issue come to a vote. It seems unnatural for us to be building refineries in Iraq but not in the U.S. We have not built any new refineries in the last 30 years. We are not preparing well for the future.
I want to take this opportunity to thank 5th District U.S. Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. for the steadfast support he has given to try to make this drilling possible. We need more people like him representing us. Please write letters, make phone calls, or whatever you can do to get the attention of those who are now in office to realize there are alternatives to mortgaging our future to the oil producing nations.
Ronald A. Ressel Jr.   Read More »

I have been reading posts by certain...ah hem...shall we say...Demicans? Posting here as Democrats. I'm not talking about those folks we know are Dems that question, I'm talking about those that post crap straight off the RNC website, which I monitor.

I will not name names or screen id's, you already know who you are.

If you don't realize just how transparent you are, then the title of this posts fits you. Lets see how you like your own medicine...OK?

About the Senate vote on cloture on the Renewable Energy and Jobs Creation Act (HR 6049). Hope you enjoy! JC   Read More »

I have a question for those that claim to be long term Democrats, but say they can not support the nominee. Are you telling the rest of us, you have ALWAYS been satisfied in the past with the nominee? No if's, no ands, and no buts?

"Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them." Voltaire

It is obvious that the Democratic Party is rapidly unifying. All the signs are there. Hillary Clinton deserves much of the credit! It has now become clear that the most offensive alleged Clinton backers posting on the Internet were never really Clinton supporters. As many people know, Rush Limbaugh launched a major disruption campaign designed to divide Democrats called "Operation Chaos". He urged his listeners to pretend to be Clinton supporters and create chaos in the Democratic Party. I recognize some of the Free Republic.com wingnuts who are Limbaugh fans posting here pretending to be Clinton supporters. They really are just Internet political terrorists. They are really frightened by the excellent prospects for huge Democratic gains at all levels this November. There is no dirty political tactic that these enemies of honest political discourse would not use! Real Clinton supporters would never support an openly anti-Choice candidate like McCain. The Supreme Court Justices that McCain would appoint are exactly the kind of Justices that Bush appointed. McCain would continue to cut funding to equal opportunity programs for women and minorities. McCain would continue the Iraq War. McCain would oppose almost every single idea supported by Hillary Clinton during her campaign. Obama would support almost every single major idea Clinton supported. Democrats want more jobs. Democrats want universal health care. We want open government. We want less influence for lobbyists and huge international corporations. We do not want oil companies, HMO's and drus companies running our government. Democrats want to de-politicize the Department of Justice and the federal courts corrupted by the Republicans. Democrats want to address the high cost of a college education. We want to really promote alternative energy. We want to attack price-gouging by large corporations. We want to rebuild our economic infrastructure before it is completely collapses. McCain will only continue the failed policies of the Bush Republicans. He is no longer a reformer (if he ever really was one). McCain voted with the Bush White House over 95% of the time since he started his White House bid! Democrats are not idiots. We do not want a third term for Bush by electing a "McBush". We want to control both the House and the Senate. We want our government back and are uniting to get it back!

Subject: Now that the primaries are over, remember what is truly at stake!!! Hi to all! This is kind of long, but I felt like I just had to write it. I was agonized today to see a column in "The Tennesseean" in which the writer pitched the case for many Hillary Clinton supporters to wind up voting for John McCain, and claimed that this is what is happening across our country. According to this columnist, women who supported Clinton are saying they will now vote for McCain, and the writer brandished a supposed national poll showing McCain currently with an 8-point lead among white women. Admittedly, the columnist was from the right, which throws her perspective off right away. After all, she has an agenda to help urge that switch along. But I was agonized, quite literally, to think that any woman who has called herself a Democrat or even an independent could for one second even contemplate voting for John McCain in the fall, simply because her candidate did not win the Denocrtic nomination. (That goes for men, too!) Now that the bruising divisiveness of our primary process is behind us, it is time for all of us to remember what is truly at stake here. This is no peacetime, everything's going great election cycle. Our country is in serious trouble, and perhaps standing at the precipous from which one more false step will lead to its permanent decline. The matter at stake that has lasting ramifications for many decades to come is that of the Supreme Court. Seven of nine justices currently serving were appointed by Republican presidents. As many as four seats on the Court may come up in the next four years, and almost certainly two at minimum will open up for appointments. John McCain is now firmly on record as saying he will nominate for those appointments the exact same kind of justices and federal judges we have seen from George W. Bush, and that means only one thing for those women who vote for him -- fewer rights. Fewer rights in employment and equal pay. Fewer in terms of sexual harassment. Fewer reproductive rights. The list is lengthy. As is the list of issues on which McCain's so-called "straight talk express" has been very clear in putting him on the record in the past three months: continued war in Iraq; no diplomacy when it comes to our enemies (so we make decisons in a vacuum); continued "tax cut" deficit spending that hurts our economy while benefiting the rich. It goes on and on from the man whose Senate record shows he voted the Bush line 95% of the time! It's Bush Lite -- sound centrist, but less substance! And read what the "Guardian" newspaper of London wrote today about how Republicans want to try to exploit any rifts in our party: "With the Democratic nomination settled, the Republican party are seeking to exploit divisions within the Democratic party and peel away Democrats and independents uneasy with Barack Obama. As soon as it became clear Obama had clinched the nomination on Tuesday night, the Republican national committee's research arm began releasing memos highlighting criticism of the Illinois senator from fellow Democrats. The Republicans memos featured primary-campaign comments that are critical of Obama from Democrats, including former president Jimmy Carter, senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, and of course Hillary Clinton. "Democrats vs Obama," the rubric is named. The Republican party hopes to capitalise on the lingering dissension among Clinton supporters, and to split them off from the party while they are still angry. The quarry: 17.5m Americans who voted for Clinton in the primaries. The party also hopes to show independent voters that not even the Democrats are united behind Obama. "The longer the Democrats have [to take] to heal these divisions, the longer it gives McCain to organise in the key states and raise money," said David Johnson, an Atlanta-based Republican strategist. "It keeps them from attacking him and trying to tie McCain to Bush. If his own party has so many questions about him, how can the American people support him?" Republicans say that using Democrats' own words against Obama effectively augments attacks from McCain surrogates like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who this morning said, "for all of Barack Obama's charm, that he doesn't have the experience to lead our economy at a time like this." It's time for us all to take a giant deep breath and begin to heal from the primaries -- and then to consider the benefits our party has derived from those primaries and the risks of not following through with that process all the way to the White House. We have benefited from the 56-primary Obama-Clinton struggle because the nominee of our party will now stand as a much stronger candidate as a result of that process. The fact that the primary process actually did what it was constructed to do this time, and was not short-circuited, means that presumptive nominee Barack Obama emerges better tested and better ready for the fall. There was no free pass this time for either Obama or Clinton, and whoever emerged was sure to be strenghtened by the process and far less likely to get KO'ed by a surprise attack later. There is a far lesser chance of a John Kerry "Swift-Boat" type attack being sprung on candidates so well vetted by the primary process. Both Clinton and Obama became tougher fighters during the primaries, and that will serve both well in their political futures. We are stronger as a party now, having drawn in millions of young and new voters, as well as attracting some Republicans and independents who for the first time have declared themselves Democrats in the primaries. We are poised by any reasonable measure for victory on a national scale that may be of historic proportions -- not only in the presidential race, but in the House and Senate as well -- IF we can heal and join together to do this. It quite literally is ours to lose, and the decisions each one of us makes between now and November will decide our own fate as a party and as a nation. Do we want to help our nation emerge from this cave we are living in? Or do we want to yet again fall back into the darkness? It's up to each of us. I hope you'll reflect on this, and pray about it, and then join me in reaching toward the future! Thanks for all you do! Jim Steele Vice Chair Lincoln County Democratic Party (Tennessee)

Thanks for the memories and the music.............

The following is a list of John McCain's Top 10 Misstatements and Outright Deceptions:
1. McCain doesn't even know who is in charge in Iran.
2. Iraq/Iran, Sunni/Shia: McCain doesn't know the difference.
3. McCain still thinks Czechoslovakia (which split into two countries in 1993) exists.
4. McCain wrongly claimed that Baghdad was mostly normal.
5. McCain called Baghdad market safe.
6. McCain can't even remember how little he knows about the economy.
7. McCain falsely claimed he never requested pork.
8. McCain falsely claimed that tax cuts increased government revenues.
9. McCain's claim to be untainted by special interest money is false.
10. McCain wrongly claimed he never supported amnesty.

A salute and best wishes to all veterans and serving military!


Go Navy.....beat Army!

It is obvious that we have a very large number of Republican infiltrators posing as Democrats on this site trying to disrupt our Party unity. This is not a new problem. For those of us who have posted on earlier Democratic Party (DNC) blogs, we know that given the opportunity, hundreds of nasty comments would be posted by crazy, Far Right Republican partisans and partisans of Free Republic.com.

They seem to be using the Clinton-Obama contest as an opportunity to attempt to undermine our unity. They have very little hope otherwise of winning the White House nor retaining even significant minorities in Congress.

First of all, both Clinton and Obama have pledged to support the Democratic ticket in November