Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of the tragic death of Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter, and the others that perished on that plane. The Senate Democrats prepared a moving tribute video, which you can see above (video or YouTube). I'm not going to lie, I teared up a little bit just watching it.

If you missed it yesterday, there were a few wonderful tribute pieces to Wellstone in the blogosphere. Chris Bowers wrote a piece entitled "Paul Wellstone Was His Brother's and Sister's Keeper":

Wellstone had generated the energy of what many, myself included, often call the contemporary progressive movement before it had really coalesced on a national level or in many different localities. And he earned this energy, this support for his campaign, because he stood with his allies. He didn't throw the netroots, liberals, immigrants, the LGBT community, unions or other progressive constituencies under the bus in order to win. He stood with them. He kept his promises to them. He didn't use them as foils or strawmen to highlight his own centrist or difference with the American left. He stood with his allies. He was his brother's and his sister's keeper.

At the Minnesota Monitor, Eric Black, wrote the haunting "Paul Wellstone Spoke to Me from the Grave":

To the limited degree that I allowed myself to feel admiration for anyone about whom I wrote, I admired Wellstone as a conviction politician who seemed, more often than most, to vote his conscience rather than seek political safety. I never expressed this to him privately, and now I can't.

And Ezra Klein's weekly American Prospect column to write what I think captured his loss and its continuing echo so profoundly. "Remembering Paul Wellstone":

In retrospect, it was, in no small part his kindness, evident generosity of spirit, and commitment to public life, that made me start thinking differently about politics. My protective teenage cynicism was no match for his effortless conviction. He robbed me of my excuse for apathy.

Wellstone's populism was not an affectation, or a political posture. It was laced into the fabric of his personality. It's what made him different than other politicians. His measuring stick was not the poll numbers, not the editorial pages, not the political prognosticators, not the Sunday shows -- it was the farmers, the students, the seniors, the people. His fealty to them explains his frequent lonesomeness in the Senate. When the people are your judges, you can stand against the Iraq War in an election year, you can lose votes 99-1. You can fail to pass legislation, because you know the compromise would fail your constituents. "Politics is not about power," he would say. "Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people."

Because of this, Wellstone had an immunity to the political trends that few politicians exhibit.
[. . .]
That they were politically inconvenient never deterred him. "If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for," he said, "at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."

I was a politically unaware freshman in college the day that Paul Wellstone died. I'll never forget being shocked by how one man's loss affect so many so profoundly. But Wellstone's true legacy, lives on in his supporters, like the wonderful people at Wellstone Action (in fact my Camp Wellstone campaign manual was loaned to a certain MyDD blogger last year).

I can't imagine how much less lonely the last five years would have been with Paul Wellstone in the US Senate. To have won in 2002, to have shown the world and the Democratic Party that an anti-war candidate could win without being scared might have shown us a different strategy in 2004. To have had him standing by Howard Dean when he spoke Wellstone's phrase "I represent the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party" might have lead us out the wilderness sooner. But in his absence we can only hope to honor his memory by living up to it.