I'll grant you that Hastert certainly had more than the usual incumbent advantages, but he also carried more than the usual amount of baggage in a change election.

You say that Laesch couldn't get any money from businesses because Hastert would have blacklisted him.  So why isn't Laesch raising money now?  Why should we think he will in the future?  I'm glad he is a good progressive, but what I want is evidence that he is a winner.

Laesch stands a far, far better chance than anyone else

Lets see.  Foster has 407K CoH while Laesch has 20K CoH.  You sure about that?  

I doubt Laesch is going to be able to keep up with a Republican self funder in this Republican leaning district.  Sure Hastert carried more weight than his replacement, but not spending any money against the Republican isn't going to do anything for us.  It's going to give them a pass on the election cycle.  

At some point we have to make a concession.  At this point in time, in this district, it fits.  In 2006, Bob Casey took on Santorum with a pro-life platform.  He then swept rural voters who were Economic Democrats and Social Conservatives setting him up for a 18 point blowout against a future presidential prospect.  Repubicans blew over 28 million dollars in Pennsylvania.  

Make a small concession here and there where we have to, pickup more seats.  It sucks, but we're going to have to.  What we can do is focus on ousting one or two lousy Democrats an election cycle.  (Lipinski and Wynn out in 2008) where their districts are very liberal, but their representatives aren't.  

I'll start with the 40% - that's better than any candidate has ever done against Hastert since his first election decades ago, and as someone else noted, it was 40% against a sitting speaker of the house.

On to money: Laesch spent $300,000 in 2006 - to Hastert's 5.2 million.  He forced Hastert to go on air here and come home and campaign in the district, something he hasn't done in a long, long time.  In fact, his pattern had been entirely to raise money, and send it along to other Republicans congressional office-seekers.  He did a bit of that in 2006, but Laesch forced him to stop and spend it at home.

On to 2008 money: Foster's personal checkbook makes Foster very attractive to the DCCC - they don't care if he has declared himself to be a Blue Dog (and he has) or that he's made himself pretty unpopular among Dems in a district that is almost 20% Latino by declaring his solution to immigration to be a National ID Card "with biometrics if necessary" (and he has) or that he has forever alienated much of the Dem base in this district by refusing to declare himself opposed to a pre-emptive strike against Iran while offering no option to cut off funding for Iraq (both of which came up at debates) or that he's just plain polling the worst of all the Dem candidates against the likely Republican nominee, Oberweis (and he is).  

They just like that he has promised to spend 2 million of his own cash on the election.  Well, that's a simple enough equation on the face of it, but buying airtime won't win this seat for a Dem - any Dem - because Oberweis can, and will, buy oh so much more.  Obwerweis has promised to spend at least 5 million of his own cash on the race - and considering the fact that his net worth is something like $53 million, he can see Foster's 2 mill, and raise him...well, however much it takes, if this comes down to a "who can whip out the biggest checkbook" battle. If money is all a Dem candidate's got to offer IL-14, it's just not enough.

Laesch, on the other hand, has the endorsements of most of the Democratic Precinct Committeepersons in the district, managed, according to the Daily Herald and just about any account from anyone present at recent debates, to garner twice as much applause as all the other candidates combined, has an organizational network that has recruited and trained Precinct Committeepersons in many places where there used to be none, has worked cooperatively with candidates throughout the district over years' worth of time - some of whom are now proudly the first Dems to hold their respective local offices in decades - and has the field effort in place to win the race on shoe leather and grass-roots support: which is what this one will take.  No easy outbuying of the competition will work in IL-14: it's just a bad strategy.  Fortunately it's not ours.  

I hope that helps to answer your question.

Lisa Bennett
aka Downtowner
blogging for the Laesch Campaign