The 110th congress has yet to convene but Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has already lowered the hammer, given the opposition their walking papers, and outlined the plan to pound through the Democrats '100 Hour' agenda.

Speaker Pelosi said House Republicans will "be given only one chance to amend or debate a plan to curb oil and gas subsidies and other Democratic priorities." Legislation "cutting subsidies to oil and gas producers is one of Democrats' top six priorities for their first 100 hours in power. Pelosi said Thursday that the oil and gas legislation along with bills cutting student loan interest rates and requiring the government to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare would not go through the normal legislative process."

And for those of you who might find outrage in Speaker Pelosi's decision to forego 'normal legislative process' I can only say that Republicans set the precedent for creative use of majority power to castrate the minority opposition. So if you don't like it, too damn bad. Now is not the time to roll over to the deposed dictators and share warm fuzzies.

This was history in the making. Don't anyone downplay it. As pointed out by Michael Bouldin at Daily Gotham, "for the first time in American history, a political party lost no seats it was defending. Ain't never happened in 230 years, folks." This was historic.

But there is one very key lesson to be learned by us...by Democrats and by the left in general. This was won big because we worked together. When we are united, Democrats win. When we let the Republicans divide and conquor us, we lose. It is up to us to maintain that unity. Unity does not mean conformity. Mostly it means mutual respect even when we disagree. More below.

I was a latecomer to eating organic, and even now it is a preference, not an absolute. I favor organic when it isn't TOO expensive. I often found organic advocates ill informed and fanatical. It made me suspicious of the whole thing. But I have been slowly converted, not so much by any strong organic farming advocates, but by realizing on my own that modern agriculture methods are often unsustainable, and often produce food only with marketability in mind, not anything like taste or nutrition or environmental concerns.

This year, there is a sign that many are coming to a practical conclusion that organic farming is sound economically. One sign of this is the fact that in two states not known for their hippie leanings, Montana and Iowa, organic farmers are running for office and may even win.

The consequences of voting for the lesser of two evils

In today's political climate, progressive politics has become heavily orientated toward a single short term goal - defeating the Republicans at any cost.

Unfortunately, this obsession of voting against one party, instead of voting for what we believe in, has prevented us from engaging in the important work of coalition building between Progressive Democrats, Independents and Greens that is essential for building a fair and just society.

A large part of our inability to challenge the political elite is that we have inherited a highly undemocratic winner-take-all voting system, which insures the political hegemony of the two party system. This traps the majority of us into voting defensively, instead of voting for candidates we believe in.

The consequences of voting for the lesser of two evils

In today's political climate, progressive politics has become heavily orientated toward a single short term goal - defeating the Republicans at any cost.

Unfortunately, this obsession of voting against one party, instead of voting for what we believe in, has prevented us from engaging in the important work of coalition building between Progressive Democrats, Independents and Greens that is essential for building a fair and just society.

Conservative political analyst Dick Morris writes that the majority senate party come 2006 might be decided in red-state Tennessee, home to Al Gore and Democratic Senate Hopeful Harold Ford. With the senate holding a 55 Republican majority, Democrats will need to pick up six seats to take over. But which six?


Top Democratic targets: (According to the latest Rasmussen polls)

Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) trails Democrat Bob Casey Jr. 56-33

Senator Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) trails Rep. Sherrod Brown 44-41

Senator Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) trails Jon Tester by 48-44

Ahead of their Democratic challengers but well below 50 percent are:

Senator Jim Talent (R-Mo.) over Democrat Claire McCaskill 43-40

Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) over Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse 44-42

Both of these would likely fall to the Democrats in the event of a broad trend towards Democrats.

My name is Barry Welsh and I am the Democratic Party Congressional Candidate in Indiana's 6th District.  I am running at Mike Pence, chair of the Republican Study Committee, and rising star in the Neo-Con movement.

This weekend was the Indiana State Party Convention.  More on that below.

After the convention, Indy DFA and the Indiana Progressives PAC held a meet and greet/fundraiser for our campaign.  We formally launched our campaign proudly at the Indiana Progressives Meetup several months ago, and the progressive movement here in Indiana has been super to our campaign.  I have to say thank you, again, to all of those wonderful, passionate, concerned citizens.  We might have raised enough for me to make a brief appearance at Yearly Kos!

I have posted about my friend, Chris Owens, who is running for Congress in the NY-11 district. This race is reaching a critical point. Chris has been doing wonderfully at the grassroots level, but lags in fundraising and the local "pundits" are looking only at fundraising in their estimation of who has a chance in this race. If Chris doesn't make a good showing in the March 31st fundraising numbers, his chances of winning will go down. Don't get me wrong. He would still have a shot. But a nice spike in fundraising would boost his chances enormously.

The 2006 elections can be won, but only with considerable effort on our parts. We all know this. In an attempt to focus our attention and donations, I have compiled a list of the Republicans most deserving of being targeted right now. There are actually two lists. The first combines an Act Blue list of the ten weakest Republican incumbents with the National Journal's ranking of the comparative liberal/conservative votes of a Representative. That combination yields three particularly conservative and particularly vulnerable Republicans we all should target for defeat.

The second list targets the most conservative of the Republicans who voted against aid to Katrina victems. I figure the mixture of callousness and conservativism of these Republicans means we should target them simply out of principle regardless of how vulnerable they are. This analysis with links to Act Blue sites is below.

If the 2006 elections were held in March or April instead of November, just about all any Democrat would have to do to win would be to buy 15 seconds of TV time and mutter three words--Iraq, Dubai, Katrina--then go home and plan the victory party.

Well, not really, but you get the idea. Unfortunately the election isn't till November, and the issue with the greatest staying power and most potential isn't either of the obvious ones: it's Katrina.

Dubai may fade, Iraq may change, but Katrina is firmly fixed in the public mind, as two recent if largely overlooked polls indicate. Katrina is the Democrats' political equivalent of 9-11.

I'm not a fan of recruiting military vets as Democratic candidates, so I look at the Swing State Project's "Band of Brothers" strategy with a very jaundiced eye.

First, the plan smacks of DLCism; the Democratic Leadership Council mistakenly thinks that the key to Democratic victories is to turn the party into "GOP-Lite" ("Great New Taste! Now with 50% less morals!").

Second, it perpetuates the Republican-manufactured notion that Democrats are weak on defense, and will be portrayed by the GOP as an attempt by Democrats to "butch-up" their image via emulating the Republican Party. I can already see Ken Mehlman saying, "Don't be fooled by imitators, vote for the real thing. GOP!"

There are better ways to counter the idiotic idea that the Democratic Party lacks defense credentials; releasing more reports like this one -- authored by House Democrats -- is a good start. Dems need to go on the offensive, attacking the GOP and exposing its hypocrisy, corruption, and ineptitude.

I am running for Congress against Mike Pence in Indiana.  My name is Barry Welsh.

If Americans are being spied on, and it is not if, we know Americans are being spied on, so knowing Americans are being spied on, I do not have to stretch the imagination great lengths to presume that our campaign will be spied on.

After all, we are challenging the status quo. It will be a contest of grassroots against the establishment.

I am laying out our campaign plan, and advertising budget below the fold, as well as statistics on this district.  Then I am going to ask for a minimum $10.00 donation from you.  I will do this after you see where the money will go, and you decide if it is a worthy cause.

Please See below.

Ohio 2nd Blogger has a post up titled "First Substantive Clash in Senate Primary". Go read it and come back.

I don't have a subscription for the article, but assuming the excerpt is representative of the articles main thrust the differences between Brown and Hackett's Iraq war position hardly seem substantive.

Let's be clear. George Bush and his Republican allies lied us into the Iraq war, and once there have spectacularly lost it. Iraq is broken and cannot be fixed by the United States. What to do now is the big question of the day. Iraq is the single biggest issue this country faces. From the continuing loss of life, to the economic drain.

So the 2005 elections highlighted what the polls, and our intuitions, have been telling us:  that there has been a dramatic shift in the political winds over the past year, and that what we have been saying about Bush and the Republicans is beginning to resonate with a wider audience.

Of course, more than a few of us immediately thought to ourselves, "Just our luck that, well, our luck has finally changed and we're stuck in an off year."  And we know that, despite the implosion currently taking place among the Busheviki and their congressional allies, a year is forever in politics ...

So everyone has suggestions for the Democrats, most of which involve some kind of bullet plan.  While I in the main agree with the idea that some sort of branding/framing (whatever you want to call it) may be necessary, I always get more than a little irritated at these calls for the Democrats to "tell people what they stand for."  (Even Jon Stewart does it sometimes, which seems to me a rare case of his parroting the SCLM conventional wisdom on this.)

First of all, the Democrats do tell people what they stand for, but only C-SPAN junkies really get to hear what they say.  This is partially the fault of the DNC and Democratic congressional leaders for not mastering the art of propaganda as well as the GOP has, but then again we don't have the Wurlitzer working for us like they do.  I don't doubt that some better branding/framing (whatever you want to call it) for 2006 might help get the message across better, but the braying about nobody knowing what Democrats stand for seems to me a canard.

There are 365 days left until the midterm elections, and the DSCC is already coming out swinging.  Senator Ron Wyden has pledged to match your contribution, dollar for dollar, until November 2, 2005:

We stand almost exactly 365 days from our big chance to take back the Senate.  But if we don't do the important things now, none of the plans we make over the next 12 months will matter.  We can't win next year's elections today in 2005, but we sure can lose them.

To show the Republicans that we will compete with them throughout 2006, the DSCC has set a goal to raise $365,000 online by November 7 of this year - exactly one year before the election.  That's an extra $1,000 we can spend every day getting our positive Democratic message to the American people.

Sen. Ron Wyden will personally match dollar-for-dollar every online donation that the DSCC receives before our deadline.  Help us meet our goal.  Please make a contribution today.

 Contribute as much as you can feasibly afford.  Every dollar not only counts...it counts double.