Markos makes a post that deserves clarification:

Not so. I have no idea why Markos is pulling DailyKos out of the "Blue Majority" page, but MyDD dropped out of the "Blue Majority" ActBlue page in the Fall of 2007, nine months ago. The reason why MyDD dropped out of it was because of BlogPac's (which Blue Majority funded) decision to target Red State Democrats that hold seats where only a conservative Democrat can win.

Act Blue has announced it's latest Candidate to be added to the Blue Majority page.

Quoted from OpenLeft by Chris Bowers

I just made my first contribution to Barack Obama, and I did it though the Blue Majority page on Act Blue. Now, I am asking you to do the same, since Barack Obama is the latest candidate to be added to the Blue Majority page.

Ever since the Blue Majority page was launched nearly one year ago, we at Blue Majority knew that we would add the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to the page. In my opinion, Barack Obama has now emerged as the presumptive nominee. With a pledged delegate lead of 162, a popular vote lead of more than 800,000, barring a spectacular collapse and / or a highly unlikely thwarting of the popular vote, Barack Obama will become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. When he reaches 2,024 delegates, which at this point requires only 42.7% of the remaining delegates to be decided, he will control both the credentials committee and the majority of the non-disputed delegates at the floor of the convention. At that point, the only way that Barack Obama loses the nomination is if he decides that Hillary Clinton should be the nominee instead. In other words, Barack Obama has become the presumptive Democratic nominee, and it is time to start supporting him.

Importantly, my rationale for endorsing Barack Obama goes beyond his status as the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination. As a progressive, there are two key ideological markers that I believe make Barack Obama a better choice than Hillary Clinton: the Iraq war and the DLC. First, Barack Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start, and rejected the neoconservative principle of pre-emptive warfare as one of his main reasons for opposing the war. Being able to identify the invasion of Iraq as a colossal mistake makes Barack Obama far more qualified to lead our country than candidates who both were, and still are, unable to recognize why the war was such a bad idea. Comparing Obama's and Clinton's statements on the death of 4,000 American soldiers in Iraq, it seems clear that Hillary Clinton still believes in the neoconservative vision for Iraq, while Barack Obama does not. The second ideological marker is the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization formed to push the Democratic Party and the national political debate to the right on a variety of issues. While Hillary Clinton is a member of the DLC's leadership, Barack Obama has repeated refuses to be associated with the group.

Friends,

As you already know, today is the last day of the all important 3rd quarter filing deadline for campaigns and I'm sure your inbox has been filled up with requests for donations and support. I want to take a moment to first thank everyone at DailyKos, Openleft, MyDD, and the Swing State Project for deciding to add my race to their Blue Majority page as well those of you who have decided to support my race and the other Blue Majority candidates. The support of bloggers is incredibly valuable and we simply cannot win without your help. Today, I want to take a moment to address you in video which is something I haven't been able to do as often as I like (though your contributions are helping us build out our staff and increase our capabilities):

Were you waiting until the last minute before making your contributions this quarter? If so, we're getting just about there, with the quarter ending this Sunday. So the time is now to head over to the Blue Majority ActBue page to make an important difference. For the week, we're hoping for 500 donors and we're getting close. Head over and make a contribution of even $10 today.

Want to help out your favorite presidential candidate or another federal candidate not on the Blue Majority list? No problem! Head over to ActBlue and make a contribution today, too. The money that comes in through Sunday will be extremely important as it will make it on to the third quarter campaign finance reports, which serve as an important guide to the politics watchers and donors alike to the viability of candidates.

So one more time, go to the Blue Majority ActBue page today and make your difference felt.

Feel free to consider this an open thread, perhaps on the candidate(s) you're supporting this time around. What Senate campaign should we be throwing $5 to before Sunday night? Which congressional campaign are we missing?

 

The next addition to the Blue Majority page is Dan Seals, who is running in Illinois's 10th district against Republican Mark Kirk.  The district is one of the bluest in the country held by a Republican, going for Kerry over Bush in 2004 by 53-47.  Seals ran a hard race in 2006, and had a heart-breaking and narrow loss.  Running for office is incredibly difficult; you must work 14 hour days for months, with almost no income, no sleep, limited family time, and no exercise.

The next addition to the Blue Majority page is a candidate returning from 2006: Eric Massa, who is running against Shotgun Randy Kuhl in the NY-29.. Please, give to Eric Massa today.

Eric is a true netroots favorite, evidenced by the tags NY-29 and Eric Massa being the most common tags for a congressional race and congressional candidate respectively, on MyDD. Eric is extremely energetic and hard working, as I have seen upclose in my visits to the district on several occasions. His energy rubs off on his grassroots supporters, who were able to close off a corporate Democratic primary challenger this past summer through relentless blog pressure, securing the support of virtually every local precinct captain in the district (including two family members of mine who joined the silent revolution in Update New York), and lots of small-donor, in-district fundraising. Now, he is set to take on Randy Kuhl who, separate occasions, has threatened both his ex-wife and his constituents with firearms, even though he claims he was just joking about the later. But he seriously doesn't like his constituents:

That is, he doesn't like his constituents unless they are Republican donors trying to build new bowling alleys in the district.

This is the "reddest" district in New York, which Bush won with about 56% of the vote in 2004. However, is it turning blue, like the rest of New York state. But Eric Massa is not your typical red-district Democrat who will let you down. As a progressive, he will fight for you, pledging to oppose FISA and watered-down withdrawal from Iraq, something few Democrats from a district this "red" have done. After losing by only 4% in 2006 despite no help from national committees, Massa is well poised to take the seat in 2008.

Support Eric Massa for Congress on Blue Majority. He is another example of more and better Democrats.

We're getting to the end of the third fundraising quarter, so we at the Blue Majority ActBlue page (MyDD, Daily Kos, Open Left and Swing State Project) are pushing through to the end of the month trying to add 500 new donors to the list. At the same time, we're adding some new candidates, including Mark Pera, who's running against one of the least loyal Democrats in the House. Markos has the details.

If you like Democrats who vote AGAINST stem cell research, AGAINST all matters of choice, FOR making the PATRIOT Act permanent, FOR the FISA bill, AGAINST gays, AGAINST immigrants (especially if they represent a heavily Latino district) and FOR George Bush's permanent war, then you'll love IL-03 incumbent Dan Lipinski.

You'll be really excited for Lipinski if you love nepotism and carpetbagging.

Lipinski won his seat in 2004 after his father, Rep. William Lipinski, decided not to run for reelection after having won the Democratic primary. In a move that has not sat well with some Democrats, the younger Lipinski, a political science professor in Tennessee who had not lived in the state for years, was nominated to replace his father with no opposition.

And if you love Lieberdems, then you'll be beside yourself with excitement, especially holding hands with targeted Republican Rep. Mark Kirk.

Lipinski and Kirk told the private gathering of members of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that they are speaking out together to forge a new path forward in Iraq.

"The best possible outcome for Democrats is to invite in Republicans such as Kirk to join us. I'm aware every Democrat will not support the Iraq Study Group and this bipartisan solution," Lipinski said. "For the last four months, we've maintained the status quo because legislation brought forward could not be passed without a veto from the President."

And if you want an endorsement of the Bush strategy for Iraq, then the excitement will be too much too contain.

The Lipinski-Kirk plan calls for a phased withdrawal similar to the one that U.S. Gen. David Petraeus outlined on Monday. Under the plan, one troop brigade would return to the U.S. in December and three more would be removed in the spring, without replacement. It would provide for troop levels in July 2008 of about 130,000, which is equal to "pre-surge" troop levels.

Needless to say, most of us don't want Lieberdems in Congress, nor Bush supporters, nor nepotism, nor opponents of choice and our Constitution. And hence, Tennessean Dan Lipinski has no business being in Congress.

Lucky for us, we have a capable and top-tier challenger in  Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Mark Pera. The local netroots like Archpundit and Prairie State Blue State appear aboard the primary challenge. Local chapters of Democracy for America have joined in the fun.

Here's Howie Klein's take on Pera:

When he graduated from high school he went to work in the steel mills of East Chicago to raise money to send himself to college. He worked in the mills every summer through college and into law school to pay his tuition. Unions and understanding the needs of Americans working men and women aren’t just theoretical to him — he has lived it.

----

But you know who is vested in the Lipinski candidacy? The Chicago machine. First, they worked with the elder Lipinksi to make sure his son would get the seat in 2004 without a real challenge.

He’s supposedly a Democrat, but he certainly fails the small D definition when he originally got the position by his father putting a fake candidate, Ryan Chlada, into the Republican nomination and then after the elder Lipinski was renominated, he bowed out and had his son placed on the ballot to replace him.
Chlada was a Cicero town employee and ran a bar.

Then, there's the question of his phantom votes:

Until his dad crowned him a congressman, he spent 15 years out of town working at universities in North Carolina, Indiana and Tennessee. Somehow, while being a resident of other states, he managed to vote here, not by absentee ballot but in person. Election judges in his father’s 23rd Ward marked him present in every Chicago election since at least 1990, according to official records.

Oddly, Lipinski, can’t recall casting those votes. “I’m trying to think back to that time,” he told me. “I honestly cannot remember.”

How about going back and examining those voting records? We can't? They're mysteriously missing. Or maybe we should say conveniently missing.

And today, the machine is spitting out primary challengers in the district to dilute the anti-Lipinski vote. One of the other primary challengers, Palos Hills mayor Gerald Bennett, has a history of lauding Lipinski, including in Lipinski's press release announcing his reelection:

Gerald Bennett, the Mayor of Palos Hills and a health care executive, said Congressman Lipinski's proposals were an "excellent approach to helping American families become better health care consumers."

"The Congressman should be lauded for working with colleagues in both parties to craft initiatives that will not only improve health care availability and delivery, but also have a great chance of being enacted," Mayor Bennett said.

Now, suddenly, when it looks like Lipinski could go down in a primary, this huge Lipinski ally somehow decides it's time to get into the race? It couldn't possibly be more transparent. Not that the Chicago machine ever played things deftly.

So here's our chance to fight back against an undermocratic machine, against an unDemocratic Democrat. No more Lieberdems. If we give them a pass, then we have no one to blame but ourselves when they force capitulation after capitulation in Washington D.C.

So join us in this end of the quarter push for Mark Pera and the rest of the Blue Majority candidates.

We're shooting for 500 contributions by the end of the week. We did it for Darcy Burner a few weeks ago, now let's do it for the whole slate. We're starting at 1,832 contributers, so we need to get to 2,332. Let's do it!

On the web:
Blue Majority ActBlue page
Mark Pera for Congress

This one's an important one, so make sure to get involved.

It is with great please that I am able to announce that the next Blue Majority endorsed candidate: Dan Maffei, from New York's 25th Congressional District.

I am particularly excited about this endorsement for several reasons. First, I am from the district, and ever since Jim Walsh originally won the seat by a few hundred votes back when I was a freshman in high school, I have been itching for someone to defeat him. Second, Dan Maffei epitomizes one of my longest-running arguments about the need to run in every district. In 2004, no Democrat ran against Walsh, but in 2006 Dan came within 1% of defeating him. Third, having met Dan Maffei, I can honestly say that there is no member of Congress, or candidate for Congress, with whom I was more personally impressed and within whom I felt more personally comfortable (there are two or three who I feel roughly the same about). When we talked for over two hours over coffee and pizza, it felt like every idea we exchanged about strategy, policy, and life really clicked (like me, he went to local public schools, and hasn't exactly made a fortune working in progressive politics). Dan is a serious, brilliant progressive, who absolutely means more and better Democrats. Please, contribute to Dan today.

Here is a video Dan put together to introduce himself and the district to the readers of Dailykos, MyDD, Open Left and Swing State Project a few days ago:



Now, some of you might ask something to the effect of "wait-he is running against Jim Walsh, the Republican who just said he was now opposed to the Iraq War? Isn't that the sort of Republican behavior we should be encouraging, rather than immediately punishing with a major counter-endorsement?" If you are asking this question, I am glad you did, because even though the Maffei endorsement was decided upon several days before Walsh's announcement, since that time it has revealed the true danger Democrats face in offering up weak, meaningless, "compromise" bills on Iraq. The NY-25 is the first case study of how Democratic weakness in the House on Iraq can allow Republican to potentially blur the difference between the two parties on Iraq, and thus wipe out virtually our entire advantage heading into the 2008 elections.

Here is the situation. Over the past nine months, Jim Walsh has said he was in favor of withdrawal, and then voted a timeline that would actually mandate withdrawal. Even in discussions with local media yesterday, and in calls I made to his staff, he refused to come out in favor of a timetable. Walsh has said that he is in favor of oversight on Iraq, and then voted against oversight. He said he was opposed to the escalation, and then refused to vote against the escalation. In May, he said he was opposed to a blank check for Bush on Iraq, and then voted to give Bush a blank check on Iraq in the capitulation bill. Everything Walsh is saying now, he ha already said before. The key difference is not hat Walsh has changed his opinion, but that Democats in Congress are changing the legislation they are trying to pass through Congress.

Back in the spring, House Democrats forced votes on stiffer legislation that required real oversight and mandated withdrawal. It only received two votes form Republicans, because the many so-called moderate Republicans who are supposedly against Bush's policy in Iraq are not willing to pass binding legislation opposing Bush's policy in Iraq. They are, however, willing to pass meaningless legislation that suggests Bush should change course, but does not actually require him to do so. For example, Walsh is a co-sponsor of the Kirk-Lipinski bill that does not mandate any troop withdrawal whatsoever, but sets it as a "goal." Compromise bills of this sort are in abundance nowadays, and I imagine Walsh will vote for all of them. However, if a bill comes up that actually mandates troops withdrawal, there is still no indication that he would vote for such a bill. Given everything he has said on the matter, I bet he won't vote for mandated troop withdrawal.

This is the crux of the problem progressives face in the 2008 elections. Bad, Bush Dog Democrats are coming up with cover your ass legislation that won't do anything to drawdown our military involvement in Iraq. Instead, the actual impact of these bills will be to allow Bush Dogs and endangered Republicans alike to appear as though they oppose Bush's policies, and thus strengthen all of their hands for re-election. In short, weak Iraq legislation in Congress will help empower Bush Dogs, and help prevent progressives like Maffei from taking over Republican seats. This is the exact opposite of the more and better Democrats refrain that has been traveling around the blogosphere. Weak Iraq legislation will allow Republicans like Walsh to blur their differences on Iraq all over the country, and the result will be fewer, and worse Democrats.

In the first major case study of this kind for the 2008 elections, we can't let this stand. Supporting Dan Maffei means opposing weak, toothless Iraq legislation in Congress. It means taking a stand against a self-defeating Democratic strategy that will not only do nothing to drawdown the Iraq war, but will also go a long way toward wiping out any chance of a second Democratic wave election. It means supporting more and better Democrats, instead of reverting to the pro-war, minority status Democratic Party of 2002-2003.

Contribute to Dan Maffei on Blue Majority. Fight Bush dogs and Republican blurring alike. This lean-Kerry district is going to be a very big race down the road, and a place where a true progressive like Maffei can hold a seat for a long time to come.