Tester won.

Awesome.  That is the message we need to promote, especially the one about expanding the playing field.  This is a key point most pundits miss. One of our roles is to help candidates out on the cheap when they cannot raise big money and the party will not touch them.

Its late and MT will not be decided until tomorrow, so I am cashing it in.  We are going to have to fight this one in court I am afraid, but I have been wrong before.

http://www.kyw1060.com/pages/122035.php? contentType=4&contentId=237503

============== ==
Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy is claiming victory in the 8th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, but there's still no definitive winner in his race with incumbent Republican Mike Fitzpatrick.
============== ===

Clinton's claiming everything is a DLC victory.  That their triangulating, run right, centrists are the key to winning.  He showed up in MI, and he had the balls to brings up NAFTA. He said he tought it would be done "fairly".  Yeah, right.  Like getting impeached for sex is "fair".  The bigger fight has just begun.  Thank you Chris Bowers for all of your strategy.  You, other bloggers, Dean, people living in the tubes - these are the folks that helped the D's win and will hopefully lead this party home again.

I will be on the ground in NC-08 tomorrow to help supervise the recount.  Kissel may still win this thing.  There are alot of fired up Dems here in NC and we won't give an inch on this one.

Now is the time for the Netroots to become truly active.  Now is the time when the Netroots can make a difference.

Look in the face of Joe Liberman and see what will become of this electoral victory if the "traditional" Democratic party is permitted to take control.

The people don't want what "traditional" Democrats and Republicans have offered them.  That is patently clear.  But since when has that meant a rat's ass to the "traditional" Democrats.

To the barricades!

Donnie put up a diary. I welcome his viewpoints here. BUt he is offbbase se when he takes a simplistic view of the Iraq war issue in the exit polls as the fourth most important issue.

All i will say is this:
Take Webb and McCaskill - two non liberal candidates (especially Webb). Do you think Webb wins if he did not use the Iraq war as one of his main talking points? He attracted a lefty base he normally would not have if he acted meek about the war ala Hillary.
Tester probably loses his election if he was iffy on his stance on the Iraq war.

Here, we got non liberals using a liberal talking point as one of their main selling points in the campaign. I am not going to say it was their only selling point. But they showed more guts in talking about this issue than so called liberals like Hillary.

Imagine if dems were more aggressive and unified on the Iraq war. then people like Lieberman become the non factor they deserve to be.

"Had netroots-backed Christine Cegelis had just $500K of that amount and the nomination, instead of the machine-supported out-of-district-Duckworth, we could have defeated Roskam too."

Yup.  I thought the same thing.  As much as I have come to love and respect Duckworth, I couldn't help but think that things were working just fine until Boss Rahm decided to improve on it at such great expense.

Pssst. Bachmann won.

Of course it's not like that was the candidate THEY recruited.

Aronsohn in NJ-05 didn't do badly considering that he had no support - so far as I can tell.  NJ-05 is a Republican dominated district albeit a moderate to liberal one, and Scott Garrett does not fit the regional profile.  

But now I wonder about the best approach with retainers like Garrett.  Do we sock him like whack-a-mole?  Or do we suggest that the Days of Dominion are over and he should come in from the cold?

where a charactergets hit repeatedly while stuck in one place

duh!

Larry is only down by 346 votes this morning with provisional ballots and others to still be counted.

I hate to say it, but the circular firing squad is starting from us this time, rather than the other guys.

Media reports of Rahm's PRIVATE, pre-election discussions are not the same thing as rushing to the media right after the election to trash the left.

Rahm is not my hero, but after a truly awesome victory, I'd like to think people would give at least a few props to the guy who was in charge of recruiting and funding our candidates this cycle.  Instead, he's the wanker of the day at Atrios, and all people can focus on is how he supposedly screwed up IL-06.  And I adored Christine, by the way, so don't misunderstand where I'm coming from.

The fact is, Rahm isn't going to the media today making a big stink about how he did it all and the netroots did nothing but get in the way.  Whereas we're the ones looking to see how much credit we can grab, looking to trash Rahm's efforts.  It's not classy, and dare I suggest, given the scope of this victory he surely deserves at least SOME of the credit.

The fight is on.  Reid posted a diary at dk thanking netroots, mostly he mentioned money.  The diary was so big with comments, I couldn't even get it open.  Point is, they think we are stupid.  Well we tried the carat.  Next comes the stick.  Lets really whack the KStreet Dems.

Lois Murphy, robbed by robocalls. And possibly Patricia Madrid, too. Let's not forget the candidates who fell within the Margin Of Theft, and make it Speaker Pelosi's priority to investigate and legislate against federal election fraud.

Yes, and he could have given a little of that money to Dan Seals in IL-10, and we might have gotten that one too.

I'm really sorry not to see Dina Titus on this list; if she had gotten the attention she deserved from self-appointed "netroots" leaders, she would have won.

I posted repeatedly here about how she embodied what the self-declared "netroots" movement is supposed to be about -- progressive candidate challenging conservatives in her own party and across the aisle; small-money donor base (60% of her money came in gifts of <$100); deep, broad and fervent local activist support built up from years of working togehter on a range of issues; active blog support; and a chance to make a difference for the long term.

She was not a self-funded, millionaire candidate seeking a seat we already held, without much of a track record, etc etc.

I really used to be enthusiastic about what this site and its participants represented, but I think under the new management, a few very well intentioned people of great energy but limited political knowledge have become precisely what they accuse others of being -- careerist, myopic, poll- and consultant-driven, and fundamentally impervious to outside input.

Ya know, you should take a look at what SEIU is doing locally as a model -- picking issues and races where it can really make a difference for the long term, rather than getting caught up in high-profile but expensive and hard-to-control national races.

That local focus more than anyhing is what Democrats need, and I guess we'll have to look elsehwere to deliver it.