Thanks to everyone at MyDD for the excellent coverage of this most fortunate election.

Best election blog on the net.

Amen to all that, Jerome.

you guys made a crucial, crucial difference. thank you

Republicans.

Gone Baby Gone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSxkAZcnM PA

"It's Morning in America Again."

*Ronald Reagan

No longer will people look to the establishment to tell them whom to fund, nor will they continue to believe that inside-the-Beltway consultants know better. To establish better campaign practices, the netroots will select and fund movement candidates that value person-to-person persuasion and niche media, instead of wasting millions on broadcast television ads.

...damn good write up. Too bad it didn't get it's chance against the Rahm = Savior narrative.

Thank you Matt, Chris, Jonathan, Jerome, et al. for the fantastic work.

I was just watching Howard Dean's morning presentation on CSPAN and thinking about how much he has been a leader for us (me).

Howard Dean envisioned a truly competitive Democratic Party that did not shrink from tough battles. Howard did not write off whole geographic regions because of ignorance or a lack of respect for the diversity of the American people.

Remember the mocking he took for appealing to the NASCAR dads? The "50 state strategy" is no longer a joke! Even Chuck Schumer gave a speech yesterday saying, "We are taking our country back" or something from one of Howard's speeches.

Howard is both a Liberal and a Conservative (in the best sense of both terms)--something that the MSM will never be able to comprehend. Howard did not speak the politically correct jargon of the ossified Great Society Party and he does not blindly accept rightwing propaganda like the DLC Dems. He spoke frankly and pragmatically with a respect for the democratic institutions of America.

Howard Dean is the unsung hero of this election and the hero of the last four years. This morning he was amazingly modest in victory when he could be spiking the ball in the end zone and dancing a gig. But I think Howard still has his eye on the ball.

Thank all of you!

First, there have been people-powered campaigns before, and experience has shown that returning some of the decision-making to the smoke-filled rooms results in better candidates. Put the shoe on the other foot for a moment and imagine if the GOP's grassroots had been allowed to nominate a Buchanan.

Second, it is possible that some campaigns were lost by being TOO unconventional and experimental. Lamont comes to mind.

Third, the questions you are answering are extraordinarily important for the future of the party, the country, and the world. I think you make excellent points, but they should be able to stand up to careful criticism from some of the old guard whom you treat, I should say, rather too dismissively.

I do not have answers myself; I have not examined the races in anything like the detail that you and your colleagues have. But I would caution you against cherry-picking evidence to support your conclusions because you feel embattled, defensive, and unappreciated. I don't think this is the case. The presence of major politicians like Kerry and Richardson and major unions like the Teamsters and SEIU on liberal blogs even before these elections proves, to me at least, that the netroots is taken seriously.

My strongest feeling is that in unity there is strength. I believe that an analysis of the races may show that we did best in the general election campaigns where the Democratic primaries were uncontested or lightly contested. This may not be so, but a comparison of the Ohio and Montana races seem to me to indicate that. I certainly believe Calif., where I live, booted away the governor's mansion through bloodletting in the primaries.

Primaries are supposed to choose the best candidate, but Angelides and a second millionaire chased away our Sherrod Browns--John Garamendi and Bill Lockyer. There is much to be said for smoke-filled rooms, and I think, as I said at the time, that Schumer was right to force the Netroots favorite out that race in favor of Brown, the proven candidate who had paid his dues.

Jerome, the most important single thing you could do for the new majorities, if you were willing, and they had the brains to ask you, would be to build state of the art interactive websites for the members.

A lot of these house members are floating on air and are going to need a quick reputation for stupendous constituent and, and indeed, pork barrel service if they hope to be reelected in 2008. It is not enough just to do it; they have to get credit in their communities, and DC can be a long goddamn ways away, even if you live Baltimore.

Chris wrote that the DC smart-asses always tell him that he knows nothing about politics. That is manifestly untrue, more today even than yesterday.

But it pays to listen carefully to what others say--maybe they are really saying you don't know EVERYthing about politics.

Anyway, good analysis, and godspeed.

-Steve

Zell  Miller  - we are a national party now. We won everywhere except Georgia.

Matt, Chris, Jonathan, Jerome, et al.  just a HUGE Thank You for all your fantastic work.

I do not know HOW,, but we have to devise some method or way to get the inside-the-beltway so called leaders to listen to us and to work co-operatively with us.

Great Article - Anyway you can "shop it" to the MSM?

What the hell does "non dogmatic pragmatism" mean?

Seriously, what do you stand for, Jerome?

Do you want to see universal healthcare or do you want a watered down healthcare plan that doesn't do much?

Do you want to see the minimum wage increased or are you willing to let the states decide?

Do you want to see unions get automatic card check recognition or not?

Where a group of politically active people stand on the issues is important, because we netroots folks who worked hard and donated much of our hard earned cash didn't do it so we can see our elected officials be non dogmatic pragmatists, we did it so we could get progressive policy put into law.

I hope folks out here in netroots land agree with me, and we use our collective power to hold our elected officials accountable.

I stayed up throughout election night and caught Tom Reynolds on C-SPAN Wednesday morning. His conclusion: the GOP was not nasty enough. Failed to disqualify the opponent was the phrase he used several times. Immediately I thought of sleaze Jon Porter and sure enough, Reynolds immediately highlighted Porter among a list who did disqualify their opponent. That's apparently defined as shamelessly lie and mislead. I guess it's obvious I'm still bitter Tessa Hafen lost that race.

If that's the conclusion from the RCCC, just imagine the attack barrage in 2008.

The netroots money needs to come earlier. Much earlier. That's what I took from this cycle. James Carville had the same basic opinion last week on Anderson Cooper. Carville said campaigns run late negative ads because they can't think of anything else and they are easy to do, but you don't get the same bang for the buck as earlier. Carville broke it down as 70% of the negative ads don't work, 15% are effective and 15% backfire. But he emphasized they are much more effective early in the cycle to define the opponent and the race.

Agreed. Tessa Hafen should have been on every A list from the outset and when she was not, it allowed Porter to shape the race via attack ads on cable TV. I could tell there was movement in Hafen's direction in the final weeks, especially when she debated expertly and the DCCC came in with ads, but it felt like late money desperately trying to rescue something that could have been solidified two months earlier.

I'm sure we'll all get a kick out of this article on the CBS news web page titled 'Netroots' Lose Their Grip In Midterms that was written by Ari Melber (The Nation). It talks about how so many of our candidates did not win. How the establishment" candidates did better than the ours. When this article was written, the Tester and Webb races were still too close to call, and they did give us credit for those candidates.

Yea, like, if not for us netrooters, we wouldn't have the Senate.

Like to write more but, gotta go.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/0 8/opinion/main2162618.shtml