Tag: Democrats

(Proudly cross-posted at C4O Democrats)

This year has been quite transformative for The West, especially The Southwest. Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico have gone from Red to Blue. Utah and Arizona don’t look quite as Red as they used to. Oh yes, and California now looks bluer than ever before.

But will this last? Will The Southwest continue to trend blue? And can Democrats continue to make gains here?

Honestly, I think so. Why? First off, demographics are shifting our way. Latinos continue to grow in population and political influence. “Creative Class” professionals continue to breathe new life into the region’s urban areas. The area has changed, and the changes favor us.

And because the demographics of The Southwest has changed, so has the politics. The old “rugged individualism” and “libertarian conservatism” that used to define the region’s politics have faded away as these formerly rural states are becoming much more urban and suburban. After all, why would young parents in Henderson, NV, worry about whether or not they can own assault rifles when they have to make plans for their kids’ college education, keep their kids safe from dangerous air and water pollutions, and be able to afford a home and food and health care? Why would a couple of biotech researchers in Aurora, CO, feel threatened by public park land in the state when they’re worried about keeping their jobs?

See where I’m going? The West has changed. I know. I’ve witnessed how my native Orange County, CA, has changed from “John Birch Society” embarrassment to dynamic urban environment. I’ve seen firsthand how Las Vegas has transformed from small casino town to world-class destination. I’ve been amazed by how the entire region has changed, and how we all saw this on full display as Democrats won across the board here.

So what should we do next? Let’s first talk about Nevada. Barack Obama won here by 12% (vs. a 2% Bush win in 2004), Democrat Dina Titus defeated GOP incumbent Jon Porter for Congress in NV-03, and Democrats now control both houses of the state legislature. So what next? We keep Majority Leader Harry Reid in the Senate and put a good Democrat in the Governor’s seat to replace the disgraced GOP incumbent Jim Gibbons, as both are quite doable. I’d now peg the Senate race as “Leans Democratic” and the Governor’s race as “Toss-up”. Oh yes, and we’d be wise to take advantage of Obama’s possible 2012 coattails here by finding a legitimate challenger to GOP Senator John Ensign.

Colorado was also good to us this year, as Obama won by 9% (vs. a 5% Bush win in 2004), Mark Udall won a formerly GOP Senate seat, and Betsy Markey unseated GOP Rep. Marilyn Musgrave in CO-04. So what can we do now? I’d peg incumbent Senator Ken Salazar’s 2010 race as “Likely Democratic” now, but we should keep a close watch to make sure we win again. And of course, we’ll need to make sure Obama wins again in 2012.

But what about California? Obama won here by a whopping 24% (vs. a 10% Kerry win in 2004) and Democrats already have both Senate seats & 33 of 53 House seats. What more can we have? How about the Governor’s seat, which I already consider “Leans Democratic” as the GOP has no strong candidate to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger? And how about winning the “Toss-up” House races in CA-03, CA-04, and CA-44 in 2010, where we came so close this year? Same goes for the “Leans Republican” races in CA-46 and CA-50?

And what about Arizona? McCain won his home state by 9% (vs. an 11% Bush win in 2004), but Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick still managed to win a formerly GOP seat in AZ-01. So is there still potential here? I think so. Without the McCain win here in 2012. And better yet, we can beat McCain in 2010, as well as fellow GOP Senator Jon Kyl in 2012, with the right candidates. Same goes with the 2010 Governor’s race, which can be a “Toss-up” if we can have a quality candidate run against newly minted GOP Governor Jan Brewer.

So where do we go from here out West? We win! Ready to win?

Looking at the county returns from the 2008 Presidential election, Obama made impressive gains almost across the board.  The one exception to the trend, as we’re all aware of around here, is in the Yellow Dog Democrat counties of the southern Midwest, Deep South, and Appalachia.  While these counties have been trending against the Democrats for decades, and particularly since the Clinton years, the Yellow Dog realignment into the waiting hands of Republicans was almost 100% completed in the 2008 election.  The question is….can we ever get them back in national elections?

Not everyone’s definition of Yellow Dog Democrats is the same, but I usually classify them as the conservative Democrats of the three aforementioned regions (Appalachia, southern Midwest, Deep South) in majority-white jurisdictions.  On the surface, Obama’s 29 county victories in Mississippi suggest a continued presence of Yellow Dog-ism, but nearly all of those 29 counties are majority-black.  One of the last-standing Mississippi counties that could be generously classified as a Yellow Dog County is Benton County in the north-central part of the state, and that was the only 2004 Kerry county in the state to swing to Bush this year.

As a rule, the smaller the minority population in a given county, the more likely they were to see a seismic movement towards McCain this year compared to past Presidential elections.  The Mondale-McCain counties chart on this website outlined this realignment quite effectively, but the role race played in harming Democratic chances in many of these counties is likely quite substantial.  Had Hillary Clinton been the nominee, it’s probably a safe bet that the Mondale-McCain county list would have fewer entries, particularly in states like Kentucky and Tennessee.

Kerry took a substantial hit in the Yellow Dog Democrat counties four years ago as well, but I’m struck how many of the now seemingly long-gone Yellow Dog counties were still onboard for Al Gore, even outside of Gore’s home state of Tennessee.  There were two counties in southern Illinois (Franklin and Perry) where Gore was victorious but favorite son Barack Obama couldn’t even pull out a win.  The same is true in a handful of counties in western Kentucky and northern Alabama.  It’s hard to imagine that any high-profile national Democratic figure could emerge victorious in 2008 in Gore counties like Ballard County, Kentucky; Jackson County, Alabama; and Hughes County, Oklahoma.

It strikes me that the significance of so many of these counties holding on through the 2000 Gore v. Bush election can be at least somewhat connected to that election being more senior-centric than any campaign in recent memory (“putting Social Security in an ironclad lock box”).  It can be safely assumed that it was the oldsters in these mostly rural Yellow Dog counties who were most likely to stick with Gore in 2000 and who have dying off in years since.  Those still alive are statistically the demographic most likely to be repelled by the prospect of an African-American for President.  But in some cases, the shift away from Obama was so dramatic this year that it leaves me wondering if the Democratic proclivity in the Yellow Dog counties has been completely abandoned by younger generations of residents.  Are the allegedly more tolerant 20-somethings of Letcher County, Kentucky, just as likely to forfeit their Democratic heritage as their grandfathers over race?  Or has the Democratic heritage been diluted over the generations to the point that the 20-somethings have no emotional or familial ties to the Democratic Party.

Interestingly, at the time I thought Gore’s 2000 showing represented the Democratic trough as it pertained to the Yellow Dog regions, at least in northern Appalachain Clinton strongholds like eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.  Certainly, I thought, the squishy Gore margins in this region merely represented a one-time flirtation with a “compassionate conservative” that was produced by Clinton exhaustion.  I felt the same about the Upper Midwest after Gore’s soft showing in that region, and went into 2004 expecting Kerry to vastly overperform Gore everywhere from Aberdeen, South Dakota, to Decatur, Illinois, to Steubenville, Ohio.  I ended up being stunned to see many of these areas actually got redder in 2004.  And then of course in 2008, the trajectory of the two pro-Bush regions split.  Obama saw considerable gains in the Upper Midwest and Corn Belt while the Yellow Dog strongholds continued their drift towards Republicans.

With that in mind, looking forward to 2012, the question begs itself….can these people be won over?  If Obama gets as high of marks for governing in the next four years as he has for organizing his campaign and transition team in the last two, will the voters of Hope, Arkansas, be less afraid than they are now of “blacks taking over the levers of power in the country” after attaining the White House?  If the insane fears of Obama’s “Muslim background” are proven fruitless in the next four years, will Al Gore’s former neighbors in Carthage, Tennessee, resume their long-standing tradition of instinctively voting Democratic in future election cycles?  If serious efforts are undertaken (and ideally delivered) to reverse the decline of the lower-middle class, will the voters of Weirton, West Virginia, reconnect with the Democratic Party they were so solidly aligned with in the past century?  Or is the drift towards Republicanism in these areas irreversible for the foreseeable future now matter how well Obama performs in office?

This year, NC voters were confronted witha Republican ticket headed up by a 72 year old white man running for President and a 72 year old white woman running for the US Senate.  I guess they call that diversity but it was pretty indicative of the seven incumbents (plus McCain)

Republicans running for Federal office in North Carolina (I’m excluding Sarah Pallin as she was essentially a tag a long).

The Congressional loser for the Republicans was 63 year old Robin Hayes.  Hayes was bested by 57 year old Democrat Larry Kissell.  That’s part of the story as 47 year old Barack Obama and 55 year old Kay Hagan whipped the aging Dole and McCain, each 72.

The Congressional winners for NC Republicans included 77 year old Howard Coble, 67 year old Sue Myrick, and two 65 year olds in Walter Jones and Virginia Foxx.  Foxx looks a good deal older than her age having the traditional old grandma look.  Only Patrick McHenry, 33, is younger than the traditional retirement age and even he got an age “Schock.”  McHenry is no longer the youngest House member being badly overtaken by 26 year old wunderkid/brat Aaron Schock of Illinois.

By contrast, two North Carolina Democrats are also clearly agingin 68 year old David Price and 67 year old Bob Etheridge.  GK Butterfield is getting there at 61.  and so is Mel Watt at 63.  Larry Kissell (57), Brad Miller, Mike McIntyre (52) and Kay Hagan (55) are in what would seem prime age for a legislator.  Heath Shuler at 36 is still young and hardly has the ambitious brat reputation of McHenry.

Makes one think of the two curmudgeons from Alaska (Don Young (73?) and Ted Stevens (84).

Cross-posted at Election Inspection 

(Note: due to formating issues, I didn't post the charts here, to see how Obama did compared to Kerry, visit the Election Inspection link) 

I've actually been quite interested in doing a comparison of how Obama did compared to the last Democratic nominee (Kerry). Here's the difference between Obama and Kerry's margins in each state (for reference, I subtracted Kerry's margin from Obama's margin to get the final number, for example, if Obama's margin in California was 24 and Kerry's margin was 9, the equation would be 24-9=15).

Obviously, since Obama won the popular vote by 7, while Kerry lost it by 3, Obama is going to outperform Kerry almost everywhere, and speaking of, the only states where Obama did not outperform Kerry were in Alaska (-1), Arkansas (-11), Louisiana (-4), Tennessee, (-1), Oklahoma (0), and West Virginia. This, however, only tells us what we already know, Obama outperformed Kerry almost everywhere. A more important question to ask would be, where did Obama do better than Kerry relative to how the entire country did (to put it another way, we know that Kerry won California by 9 points, but he lost the national popular vote by 3 points, so Kerry actually ran 12 points higher in California than in the country, and Obama, who won California by 24 points but won the popular vote nationwide by 7 points, performed 17 points better than the country at large. Subtracting Kerry's performance in California compared to the country at large from Obama's same performance means California voted 5 points more Democratic relative to to the rest of the country than it did 4 years ago).

So how did Obama do in these other states compared to the national vote relative to Kerry?

(Follow link at the top for a look at the relative performance of Obama to Kerry in each state)

This gives us a much better picture of which states, in any given year, are moving more Democratic, and which ones are stalling out. Of course, it would be smart to keep in mind that some of these numbers have to be taken in context of home state effects of presidential and vice presidential candidates (Arizona, Alaska, Illinois, Hawaii, and Delaware are the home-states of McCain, Palin, Obama, and Biden respectively; while Texas, Wyoming, Massachusetts, and North Carolina are the home-states of Bush, Cheney, Kerry, and Edwards, if some people over/underperform in certain states and regions, it has to be taken in this context). The glaring exception to the home-state advantage here is North Carolina, where Obama performed three points better relatively to his popular vote standing than Kerry did (and could easily be attributed to the growth of the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area). The states where Obama had the highest outperformance of Kerry's standing were in Hawaii (+26), Indiana (+12), North Dakota (+9), and a three-way tie between Utah, Montana, and Nebraska (+7 each). Obama's top under-performances, by comparison, were in Arkansas (-21), Louisiana (-14), Alaska (-11), Tennessee (-11), with a tie between West Virginia and Oklahoma (-10 each). There are, of course, a bunch of others, but generally speaking, we can say that by comparison, Obama generally underperformed Kerry in the south and the northeast (the exceptions being Vermont, Virginia, Georgia, Delaware, Connecticut, and North Carolina), while he generally outperformed Kerry in the midwest and the west, particularly where there was a large Hispanic population (New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and California). Obama seemed to stick pretty close to Kerry's relative performance in Washington State, Oregon, and Iowa (in fact, it seems that compared to the country, Iowa seems to have a consistant Democratic lean, as it changed exactly zero relative to the country)

This has extremely important ramifications for both presidential and down-ticket races in the future, for example, three states which Obama won which Kerry did not (Ohio, Florida, and Iowa) might seem to be massive improvements for the Democrats compared to how Kerry did, but in actuality, Obama underperformed Kerry relative to the rest of the country in Florida and Ohio, while Iowa stayed the same relative to the rest of the country (that is to say, in both 2004 and 2008, Iowa was roughly three points more Democratic than the country at large) (of course, for Ohio, Kerry actually did relatively better than most Democrats normally do in Ohio, but it usually tends to vote slightly more Republican than the rest of the country, whereas Ohio voted slightly LESS Republican than the national vote in 2008). Now, relatively speaking, Obama tended to GREATLY outperform Kerry in the midwest (Obama's relative performance in Wisconsin was 2 points better, in South Dakota was 3 points better, in Nebraska it was 7 points better, and a full 9 points better(!)). Of course, Obama did, relatively speaking, underperform Kerry in Minnesota, but that might be more a function of McCain spending a dispropotionate amount of time and resources in Minnesota (one of the only places where McCain was significantly outspending Obama on both field organization and advertising). The places where Obama really outperformed Kerry though were in the southwest and the mountain west (Obama outperformed Kerry by 3 points in Colorado, 4 points in Idaho, 5 points in Nevada, 5 points in California, , 6 points in New Mexico, 7 points in Montana, and 7 points in Utah. Like I said above, Obama did tend to underperform in the south, but the three places where Obama outperformed Kerry are states which have strong implications for state-wide Democrats are in Georgia (+2), North Carolina (+3), and Virginia (+4). The other two big deals are California (which has become almost as Democratic as New York) and Indiana (which went from being 18 points more Republican than the country to being only 6 points more Republican).

Democrats are probably going to have a harder time getting elected in Southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Oklahoma, but strong Democrats are going to have a much easier time running in states like Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Furthermore, with California's gubenatorial race in 2010, if the Democrats don't rip each other apart like they did in 2006, they should have an extremely good chance at winning the governor's mansion, and controlling redistricting for the census.

(Proudly cross-posted at C4O)

This week has been nothing short of amazing! Barack Obama will be our next President. More and better Democrats will be going to Congress. The electoral map has undergone a major blue shift.

So why has this whole experience been bittersweet at best for me? Well, all is not well in my own home state. So what can we celebrate and what must we fix? Let me share with you the story of this election from behind the scenes.

First off, let’s start with the bad news. We lost in California. But wait, you ask, didn’t Obama win by about 24%? Isn’t that good? Of course it is, and that isn’t the problem.

The problem in California is that Barack Obama had hardly any coattails here. Look at how Prop 8, the marriage ban, may end up having to be stopped at the courts (again, hopefully). Look at how, barring the results in CA-44 & CA-04 changing in the provisional vote count, we have not gained any new Congressional seats. Look at how we’re still short of a 2/3 supermajority in both houses of the state legislature.

Simply put, we failed our mission in The Golden State. There were hundreds of thousands of “undervotes” here, meaning that people voted Obama for President but did NOT continue downballot to vote on Congress, the initiatives, and local races. This is nothing short of tragic, and there’s no excuse for the nation’s biggest Blue State to still show so much red! Because of the inept and disastrous “leadership” of the state party, the refusal of the DCCC to invest in real races like CA-44 & CA-46, and the horribly gawd-awful “leadership” by The Task Force & Equality California on the No on 8 campaign & their failure to have a real ground game, we missed the opportunity to turn the Obama victory into a progressive victory in California.

Now contrast what happened in California on Tuesday to what happened in Nevada on the same day. While one state didn’t change much, the other state next door underwent a massive transformation! Like Mountain West neighbors New Mexico & Colorado, Nevada is now officially a Blue State! And not just that, but Democrats now have a broad and clear mandate for progressive change.

Progressive Democrat Dina Titus was elected to Congress in a “swing district” that Bush won in 2004. Democrats now control both houses in the state legislature for the first time since 1991, including a 2/3 supermajority in the Assembly. Voters approved a good initiative that will actually help Nevada fully fund its schools. And of course, Barack Obama won the ex-Red State by a whopping 12%, including an 18% win in Clark County (Las Vegas Metro) and wins in the formerly Republican Carson City & Washoe (Reno) Counties!

So why were the results in Nevada so dramatically different? Let’s see, Harry Reid and the state party leaders actually began early in registering more Democrats and building an aggressive field operation while the GOP was power drunk and asleep at the wheel. The Obama campaign and the state party were effective in coordinating with the Dina Titus campaign, the Jill Derby campaign up north, and the local campaigns. All the candidates up and down the ballot had a clear and consistent message for change more. economy, energy & environment, education, health care, and so much more. Basically, Democrats worked together on the ground and that’s why we won!

So what lessons can we learn from this tale of two states? First off, there’s no real substitute for a grassroots door-to-door, face-to-face campaign. Despite the good last-minute ads, they may have been too little & too late to make up for the lack of a ground game for No on 8 in California. Meanwhile in Nevada, no amount of negative attack ads from the Republicans against Dina Titus & Barack Obama could make up for their complete lack of a ground game while we Democrats truly rocked the vote!

OSecondly, Nevada Democrats succeeded in translating an Obama victory into a progressive victory while California Democrats were simply lost in translation. Why couldn’t we win the 45th & 48th Congressional Districts when Obama carried them? Why couldn’t Debbie Cook win in the 46th when Obama carried it? Why were there so many undervotes statewide? Whatever the Nevada Democratic Party did right, the California Democratic Party needs to learn how to do it.

And finally, we should all be of good cheer! The West is ours if we want it! The results across the region prove that where Democrats work, Democrats win. But in places like California where state party leaders grew complacent, we lost out on real opportunities.

So what do we do next? After we’re done celebrating, we will go back to work! We have more work to do to keep progress going, so let’s do it! 😀

Perhaps the timing of this diary is irregular considering we want to see as many Democrats as possible elected next week, but my own selection is connected to the current state of the electoral battleground in a sense.  There are a number of strong contenders particularly in the House, and perhaps Tim Mahoney is currently the most obvious choice, at least for his brief remaining tenure in the House.  Those with the stench of corruption encircling them, such as William Jefferson or even John Murtha, would also be worthy selections.  Jim Marshall seems to be against the Dems on virtually ever major issue so I’m sure he’d get some votes.  But after the final clincher this spring, I offer the dubious honor to Dan Boren of Oklahoma….

Boren has always essentially been Lieberman on steroids in terms of bad-mouthing the Democratic Party, making several cringeworthy quotes about his party’s “out-of-touch leadership” going way back to his first election in 2004.  And of course he votes against us on essentially every major issue.  But I was most disgusted with him last spring after the primaries ended when Boren publicly declared he would not cast his superdelegate for Barack Obama, twisting the knife in the chest of an already divided party and making a destructive spectacle out of a vote that would have been uncontroversial.

One could almost understand if Jim Marshall had done this because Marshall is in a hotly contested district.  But Boren would not have lost his Congressional seat by keeping his mouth shut and casting his superdelegate for his party’s nominee….or even casting the superdelegate for Hillary in silence.  Instead, Boren stuck it to Obama and gave comfort to every Oklahoman with doubts about Obama.

I realize Boren won’t be going away and that a conservative Democrat is the only kind that can hold this seat, but I would love to see Brad Carson take this seat back.  At least he didn’t go out of his way to trash his party, and when pressed by Tim Russert back in 2004 on who he planned to vote for, said without hesitancy that he planned to vote for his party’s nominee.

(Proudly cross-posted at C4O)

Nervous yet? I know I am. It’s crazy enough having to follow the Presidential Election 24/7. But for me and my friends & family here in California, we have even more on our minds!

We have a Congressional race to win. We have an evil, discriminatory

ballot initiative to defeat. And of course, we have a community, a county, and a country to take back!

Let me tell you about what I did last weekend to make all of this happen.

On Saturday, I met with some hard-working union friends in Costa Mesa to walk a neighborhood for Debbie Cook. As always, the pre-walk rally was great! Debbie fired up the crowd as she talked about what she would do to actually serve us in the district. Local labor leaders talked about what we can do to translate enthusiasm for Obama into votes for local Democrats. All in all, I felt quite good about what I was about to do to help Debbie win.

I also felt good about going out and talking to voters about Proposition 8. For all of you unfamiliar with California politics, we often govern by initiative because of our dysfunctional state government. Unfortunately, the radical right has used the initiative process to try to pass horrible legislation that wouldn’t otherwise see the light of day in Sacramento. Prop 8 is one of these horrid radical right power plays that would overturn marriage equality in California and reinstate a Plessy v. Ferguson style segregation that treats gay and lesbian couples as inferior to straight couples. The polls on Prop 8 are close now, so we can’t take anything for granted. That’s why I included Prop 8 in my walk.

After the rally, I walked with a friend from the local Young Democrats club in a Republican leaning area near the 405 Freeway in Costa Mesa. At first, I was disheartened by all the “Yes on 8” and “McCain-Palin” signs I saw on the street. But as I began talking to the voters on our list, my experience wasn’t so demoralizing. In fact, I found a few undecided Republicans, two houses with Debbie Cook signs up, and a beautiful 90 year old woman who smiled as she told me she was voting for Debbie Cook and against Prop 8! All in all, that’s not so bad for a “Republican stronghold”!

On Sunday, I shifted to the small southwestern portion of Santa Ana that lies in the 46th Congressional District. Specifically, I walked the neighborhood across the street from mine which has sizable Latino and Vietnamese populations. And while this neighborhood is less Republican than the Costa Mesa neighborhood I walked the previous day, I knew it would still be an uphill battle here. So what happened?

I was in for some pleasant surprises! I met a wonderful 80 year old woman who was glad to hear about Debbie Cook and was already voting no on 8. I met a fantastic 60+ couple who have been volunteering for MoveOn.org, so they were very receptive to what I had to say! I found a couple more undecided Republicans and some young voters who appreciated my last minute reminder to vote. So again, the final results weren’t as bad as I had originally expected.

So what does this all mean? Hopefully, this means that we can win if we work for it! Despite all the talk of whether or not Obama will “win by a landslide!”, we can’t be sidetracked into post-election punditry when we still have an election to actually win! And despite all the talk about California being “safe”, it’s NOT! It’s not safe for marriage equality, but on the other hand it’s also not safe for corrupt Republicans.

So what can we do in the next week? We can donate! We can volunteer! We can do all we can in the next week to win and WIN BIG! So don’t just stand there, but go out & help win this election! 😀  

It’s looking increasingly obvious that we have major opportunities opening up nationwide. We have a real chance to expand our Democratic majority in Congress beyond our wildest dreams (back in 2007) while also winning back The White House with Barack Obama. That’s why it’s critical that we take action NOW to take advantage of this unique opportunity we have now.

Want to see where I’m looking?  

Well, let’s start with a race that’s suddenly jumped onto the national radar. Let’s talk about California’s 46th District. I’ve been working this district for a while now, as I live just blocks away from the district boundary. I can’t emphasize enough how good a chance Debbie Cook has to win. I’ve walked the district everywhere from Santa Ana to Long Beach to Costa Mesa to Catalina. I’ve talked to Republicans who are ready to vote for Debbie and Democrats who are excited now like they’ve never been excited before. Now’s our chance to turn this red district blue.

Let’s talk about the 44th District. This race may still be under the radar, but we shouldn’t be ignoring Bill Hedrick. The Republican registration gap has narrowed dramatically, the Inland Empire has been shifting gradually to Democrats, and we have a great candidate running in Corona-Norco School Board Member Bill Hedrick. He’s been winning in a “red district” before, so let’s not underestimate him now.

And of course, we have even more special opportunities in California today. Both Bill Durston in CA-03 (Suburban Sacramento) and Nick Leibham in CA-50 (Suburban San Diego) are in a dead heat against the Republican incumbents. Charlie Brown in CA-04 (Exurban Sacramento) remains poised to send Carpetbagger Tom McClintock packing to the next race he’ll file for. Even supposedly safe Republicans like Mary Bono Mack in CA-45 (Palm Springs Area) are now feeling the heat!

So what can we do to make California bluer? Give! I mean it… Give!

We’re only two weeks away from victory. How big do you want it? Well, we can make it big here in California. Are you ready to make it happen?

Well, Heather Ryan has her first T.V. ad completed. It is a humourous take on Exxon Ed Whitfield’s record of serving Big Oil and the Bush Administration which I have named “The Zephyr Hillbilly”. It is our 30 sec. spot, and we have a couple of more in the offing.

Without further adeu, here is “The Zephyr Hillbilly”:

Now, the jingle you here on this ad doubles as our radio spot. We already have some money to run this ad, but we need help to run it as much as possible, and run the two other ads we have nearly completed.

Progressive Democrats, we need your help!! Can you give $100, $50, $25, $10, or even $5 to help us run our ads as much as possible? No donation is too small for our grassroots campaign!!

Exxon Ed Whitfield is tied to our failing economic policies and has voted over 90% of the time with the failed Bush Administration. If we get a chance to introduce his record and our candidate, we win!!

Please, help “Fighting Kentucky Democrats” pull a huge upset here:

Barack Obama need not worry about our 55 electoral votes. House incumbents like Jerry McNerney (CA-11) and Loretta Sanchez (CA-47) that may be vulnerable in other election cycles need not worry this year. So why should we care about California now?

Let me explain it to you.

First, let me start with some bad news. The radical right has bomarded us once again with horrifying initiatives that WE MUST DEFEAT! Mainly, Proposition 4 and Proposition 8 should scare us all. Why?  Because the radical right is willing to endanger teenage girls with Prop 4 to chip away at women’s reproductive rights while they also work to pass Prop 8 and legalize bigotry and discrimination as they take away marriage equality.

Get the picture now? The election in California is just as important as in Nevada or Virginia.

Oh, and here’s another reason to care about The Golden State: Congress! I should know. I live just blocks away from one of the hottest races in SoCal (our slang for Southern California). And guess what? I’m getting to work over here! I know Debbie Cook can win CA-46 if we support her!

And you know what else? It’s not just Debbie Cook in the 46th District. It’s Bill Durston in the 3rd District, Charlie Brown in the 4th District, Bill Hedrick in the 44th District, Julie Bornstein in the 45th District, and Nick Leibham in the 50th District. It’s also people like my good friend’s husband who’s running for State Senate. It’s those competitive Assembly seats that can give us a Supermajority. It’s those local level races that can fill up our bench with great future Democratic leaders!

So please, please don’t forget us here in California! Please help us defend our values and expand our majority! We must act now to keep California blue… And hopefully make it bluer! 🙂