BTW, cheer up guys. Hackett got 48% in a district where Kerry could barely manage 35%. According to Charlie Cook, this is a "serious warning sign to the Ohio GOP that something is very, very wrong".

Makes me feel a lot better than November 2004 looking at my own heavily Republican district.

If the crooks have to fight and mangle to win their own backyard, then the middle is now officially wide open.

Strickland has consistently won in a tough district that includes large rurual and southern populations.

He has both a P.H.D. in Psychology, and a Masters in divinity.

He's also doing very well raising money and support from Democrats at the local level. Just the other day he had an event in Geauga County that was larger than the county party's annual dinner.

And on the issues he largely mirrors the state. He's a populist economically, he's not going to be tarred as a "gun and bible banner" while still achieving a decent rating from Planned Parenthood.

Putting someone else in that race, especially with senate unfilled would be insane.

If he's planning his long term political future, I think he should run for Governor next, serve two terms, then run for president.

Who was the last Ohio governor to become president, Wm. McKinley? I think the next should be Paul Hackett.

The guy is a natural, he has the charisma and the rhetorical skills to electrify the electorate.

I think Hackett will get his butt handed to him if he runs for this seat in Nov. '06. The GOP base didn't really show up for this special election. In Nov. '06, it will.

I actually agree with Jerome  - Hackett should give serious consideration to a statewide race - he'll have a much better shot winning statewide than winning OH-02. And the OHGOP is truly imploding statewide. They probably don't have anyone in a position to take on and defeat a well funded statewide Hackett candidacy.

I would be extremely cautious before trying to say that Hackett's performance tonight means that Dems  are about to sweep into congress in large numbers in the fall of '06. It's just way too early to tell if that'll happen, and quite frankly very, very few of the Democratic challengers out there will be of Hackett's caliber or have his funding level (which was a hugely important factor in his performance tonight).

Keep up the awesome work.

Neo

ps: and thanks to PH for standing up and fighting! we need heroes like you to change the sorry state of affairs in our national politics. Keep it up, and aim even higher!

What a great night.  I'll have a difficult time going to sleep tonight, I'm so thrilled.  Who knows, maybe even down here in Georgia (where I live) things could start turning a little more purple, again, with the right candidates and enough energy.

In any case, I'll be really interested in the more detailed analyses over the next few days re: what worked, what didn't, what can be nationalized.

Keep the momentum, change the target.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/2005/local/08/02/race_results.html

While I agree that the Ohio GOP is in shambles, and I agree Hackett ran a great campaign, I don't necessarily think it means the Dems as a whole are in a much better position. I think it means that--DUH!--defiant economic populism works a hell of a lot better than DLC corporate elitism.

Will the DLC corporate elitists get the message?

Would you like to buy a bridge?

the Dems should definitely target OH-02 as a seat to go after in '06 though...actually every seat in Ohio should be strongly contested.

I know this is clear speculation, but given the great showing Hackett made how would he do against Dewine.  I think a great candidate for Senate is as important as Governor.  Dewine has name recognition, but it isn't that great.  It would be nice to see a poll with the head-to-head numbers.  I personally think Hackett could pull that one off.

The reason 50 state strategy works is that if you contest 50 low probability races (say, 5% chance of winning), it means you win 2-3 of them.  The problem with giving up a race is that you have to make that decision a year before the election.  When you do that, you give up any chance of taking advantage of good circumstances: scandals, prevailing political winds, etc.  

Also, the more races we run, the more candidates you run.  Some of them are bound to be good.  Hackett was perfect.  This was a Rep district, but it sort of was a double edged sword for the Reps.  I'm guessing that the district had some extra respect for a guy who actually fought in the war.

So we had the combo of a lot of factors: Reps weaker than '04 everywhere, Ohio Reps in shambles, and a good candidate who was a perfect fit for a conservative district.

The Reps have some real issues.  The gay rights, Supreme Court justices and Schiavo crap piss me off a lot, but those issues don't win elections in the tough districts we need to win to get the House back.  But the Reps have handed us a no-downside issue on a silver platter: corruption.  

That's what we need to hammer over and over, and there's no side effects of playing it.  It's hard to push a guy in a conservative district by fudging abortion, and then in the next district  the same party's candidate is heralding their pro-choice laurels.  But corruption is non-controversial, and can be played to full effect everywhere.

The Reps didn't win in '94 b/c of the Contract with America; they won because we had been in power forever, had gotten arrogant and complacent, and were scandal-prone.  People weren't voting for the Reps, they were voting Dems who had gotten too fat and happy out.

Last thing, we REALLY need to win the House in '06.  I think we can do it, and I will be disappointed if we don't.  I'm tired of moral victories.  I'm not knocking the Hackett race, because I think it truly was an incredible achievement, but at some point we need real victories.  '06 is the big one for us.  If we don't win in '06, things could get tougher for us in '08.  The Reps' missteps could be papered over by then. Midterm elections are always the best chance for the out-of-power party. If McCain wins the Rep nomination (I realize that is no sure thing by any means), we are going to be running uphill, because McCain will not have the Bush taint, since no one can claim that he was in Bush's club.

If we win in '06, it would be nice to dump Pelosi as majority leader.  I know that may not be popular, but she communicates poorly and plays bad to anyone who's not a hardcore Dem.

After 2004 I knew Ohioans couldn't be trusted to do the right thing. Granted these were mostly GOP people and already pretty much unable to think for themselves. My fellow Floridians and Ohioans were made for each other.

And I got flak from some of you for saying this is why we have an electoral system: because the founding fathers knew the danger of putting too much decision-making power into the hands of the ignorant masses? Just look at the House! Proof.

You should be required to have at least a bachelors degree to vote, I swear. The peasants in this country piss me off to no end.

Let's not "Edwards-ize" Hackett and over-reach his true potential. It is tempting because our bench is so weak in so many states.

Alos, running for Senate would bring in all the clowns at DSCC and the DLC/NDN, who will force him to act like a Republican and he will lose.

Let's not get greedy I will be very happy to get a REAL DEMOCRAT in the Congress.

If he said it, he's got to do it.

If he doesn't do it, he'll be smeared by the chickenshit chickenhawks and their fat-assed allies in talk(ing points) radio.

So go; come back alive, and then run for statewide office in Ohio.

Prove that members of one party keep their promises.  Fundamentally, that's what the '06 midterms and '08 presidential elections will be about -- integrity.

Your right. Hacket has build an organization and should hold onto the momentum by expanding on it now. He can do a lot more about the Iraq mess by taking the empowerment of the constituency that he demonstrated and engaging the politicians who have gotten us into Iraq. He is a proven leader not a foot soldier.

Where I disagree is limiting his potential to Ohio in the gubernatorial race. The U.S. senate is the target. If he could do so well in a GOP stronghold he can kick ass state wide. That potential needs to continue to be directed at the congress. The Democrats would be wasting a lot of great potential otherwise.

Off topic giggle:

Fundamentalist Christian President George W. Bush showed his real hate filled Christo-fascist side to the media in the halls of congress. See the video of Bush giving the media the finger at:

Bush Flips Out OneGoodMove.org

And:

Special elections usually draw less voters than do regular elections.  But Hackett got more votes in this 2005 special election than the Democrat who ran in the 2002 mid-term got.  Granted, the same guy did better than Hackett last year, but that was a Presidential election, which draws more voters than do the mid-terms.

The lesson:

GOTV works.  In more ways than the obvious ones.

"After Schmidt won the 11-candidate GOP primary on June 14, there was a feeling on both sides that the special election campaign would not be much of a contest.

That feeling turned out to be wrong.

By the middle of last week - with cable network news crews tailing the Iraq war veteran candidate along the highways and byways of the 2nd District, and internal polls indicating Hackett was a real threat - the National Republican Congressional Committee landed in southern Ohio with both feet, pouring more than a half-million dollars into TV advertising that claimed Hackett wanted to raise taxes.

Hackett also got the attention of the Ohio Republican Party, which sent its entire field staff to the 2nd District to set up phone bank operations in all seven counties of the district."

The banana republicans were able to do this because this was a special election, but '06 they will have their own districts to worry about...maybe he can win next year....

FIRST PRIORITY:  Fix the voting process.  Here is PBS tech guru Bob Cringely:

My model for smart voting is Canada.  The Canadians are watching our election problems and laughing their butts off.  They think we are crazy, and they are right.

Forget touch screens and electronic voting. In Canadian Federal elections, two barely-paid representatives of each party, known as "scrutineers," are present all day at the voting place.  If there are more political parties, there are more scrutineers.  To vote, you write an "X" with a pencil in a one centimeter circle beside the candidate's name, fold the ballot up and stuff it into a box.  Later, the scrutineers AND ANY VOTER WHO WANTS TO WATCH all sit at a table for about half an hour and count every ballot, keeping a tally for each candidate.  If the counts agree at the end of the process, the results are phoned-in and everyone goes home.  If they don't, you do it again.  Fairness is achieved by balanced self-interest, not by technology.  The population of Canada is about the same as California, so the elections are of comparable scale.  In the last Canadian Federal election the entire vote was counted in four hours....

And I can attest, Hackett would make a formidable statewide candidate.

He had volunteers from as far away as Texas.  Just got on a plane and landed in Cincinnati.

We all worked our butts off.  And local Dems put us up in luscious, luxurious rooms: there own homes.  

Hackett stopped by the office I was on Tuesday, followed by a troop of cameras.  In the meantime, the county executive was working the phones and calling Democrats to GOTV.  

What great fun.  Hackett told his volunteers to hang on to our tee-shirts.  

What energy this guy created.  If we had a Paul Hackett in every district, we'd be taking back the house next year.  

In person, he is exactly the way he comes across on television.  A cool breath of fresh air.  Totally unscripted.  And although I never heard him early on, those who did said he got stronger and stronger as the campaign went on.

Too many volunteers were callng the same names over and over again.  

And t