Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:17

It has been a pleasure to see the leadership roles taken by those Fighting Dem Vets who went to Congress and Senate. Jim Webb has been amazing in the Senate, moving more boldly than is normal for freshmen Senators. And in the House Vice Admiral Sestak has been an advisor up and down the halls of Congress and makes the chickenhawks on talk shows sheepish (sorry for the mixed metaphor!) when he speaks of commanding a battle fleet. His newly elected Fighting Dem colleagues have been equally powerful voices on the Hill.

You can see a video of Joe Sestak and Patrick Murphy speaking out against escalation of the Iraq War here.And Fighting Dem activists like Jerry McNerney in California and Carol Shea-Porter in New Hampshire, both of whom are near relatives of active duty military or veterans, are the kind of grassroots Fighting Dems that go hand in hand with our vet candidates.

But these are just the vanguard. They have already been put in the sights of the GOP for seats to take back and we can support their reelection through their endorsement by VoteVets (http://www.votevets.com). We must take the long view, because back our government and establishing a new Democratic Majority is not the work of any single election. There are many districts in which one can see the upward movement that began in 2002 or 2004 and continued in 2006. This was the vanguard, and the second "Blue Wave" will come in 2008 as we build the party in so-called "Red" districts from the ground up. The top two tiers of Fighting Dems will hit the beach in 2008 and more in 2012.

The Fighting-Dem.com website has been rebuilt to support Fighting Dem Vets and will be officially launching in a week or two after a little more tweaking. In the meantime you can see our current list of candidates running or rerunning for office. Go look around and post a diary. It works like dKos with a front page and diaries listed in the right column. The following candidates are actively running and another half dozen to a dozen are currently preparing to announce or weighing their decision to join the fray or not. Others will be lining up as time goes on. Each of the following was a 2006 Fighting Dem candidates who choose not to let up on pressure against the neocons madness.

• 2008 Fighting Dem Candidates
• Bob Bowman (FL-15)
• Jim Brandt (CA-54)
• Charlie Brown (CA-04)
• Andrew Duck (MD-06)
• Bill Conner (OH-07)
• Eric Massa (NY-29)
• Bill Mitchell (FL-09)
• Bill Morrison (TN-07)

Note that some of these races are top tier races for 2008, including Charlie Brown and Eric Massa who are two of the finalists for the DFA contest currently now underway. Please go vote for one of them now as you can just make it under the wire. As a member of the Eric Massa Blogging Team I would urge you to vote for Eric, but Charlie is a great candidate as well. These two top tier Fighting Dem Vets being are being positioned for the win in 2008 that cannot be denied.

Below are the stats for these two races. I will be publishing a full Blue Wave 2008 diary in another week or so, but this will serve as an appetizer (in alphabetical order):

1. Charlie Brown (CA-04) lined up against John Doolittle (newly being investigated for possible corruption)and Charlie lost by less than five points, 46/49. In 2002 and 2004 the figures were 32/65 and 35/65, respectively. Charlie whittled it down from a 30 point lead to a 3 point lead. You can see the current diary on Doolittle here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/23/22713/3305

2. Eric Massa (NY-29) went up against Bush crony Randy Kuhl and lost by less than five points. Eric in fact was poised to win but the GOP dumped massive negative ads and made robocalls in the final moments of the campaign which were not matched by the DCCC or other Democrat organization (we must not let this happen again). In 2002 a popular Republican moderate won 21/73, but Kuhl won the seat by only ten points 51/41. Eric shaved that to a near win by building the Democratic Party from the ground up in his district. You can see Eric's Sunday post here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/22/14019/7937

Both these candidates are among the finalists for the Democracy for America Grassroots All-Stars contest. Please vote if you haven't yet. Here is the link:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/allstars

Noel Schutz
Publisher