Huh? A relatively provocation-free post from Desidero. About local races!

I'm IL-15, in flat east central Illinois. It includes Champaign (university town), part of Bloomington, and a w h o l e lot of corn and soybeans. And farmers. Tim Johnson has been our Republican rep. since 2000, and sadly, his seat is as safe as houses. We don't make anyone's list of possible pick-ups.

I do have a couple of Democratic senators you may have heard of, which is fun -- we saw the junior senator speak when he was first running for Senate in 04.

Not a lot of contested races here, so on the whole I have to think globally, and act globally.

Love this blog. Wish I could recommend twice.

Digby is right. This will be a sustained effort that encompasses wins and losses. We have had a system rigged for incumbents for too long to expect it to change overnight.

I do think it will change, though.

In fact, I am in DC, but just up the road in Maryland, longtime incumbent Al Wynn lost his primary to a very progressive challenger in Donna Edwards. She is sure to advance in November. I agree that this is a long hard road and one that is just getting started.

For me, I would love to get Eleanor Holmes Norton out and put someone in there who wouldn't shut-up about DC representation until they finally gave it to us. She is long past her shelf-life in that position with no movement on either full State's rights are being repatriated back into Maryland, like a good chunk of Alexandria and Arlington did a long time ago.

There is a progressive solution to the problem of DC, we simply lack leadership to get it accomplished. I think Norton is much more vulnerable to a good challenger than she realizes. The city is small and a big enough mouth could attract attention and possibly some votes. Wait. I have a big mouth and live in DC.

That requires some thought. Don't tear the wings off that fairy just yet, we are still trying to fix the dragonflies.

The race that I am excited about locally is Jay Nixon for governor (not very local, but more local than the national presidential race which we are all discussing most of the time of late). He is one of those few democrats who is popular in both the big cities of St Louis and Kansas City and in the more rural parts of the state. He has long coat tails and I am hopeful that his election will help us to take back the state legislature in time. Meanwhile, I am also excited about Andrea Simckes for state treasurer, although her chances of success are far slimmer than Nixon's.

Long-term thinking? From a Democrat? Well, fuck me--at last I've seen it all.

Scott Harper in IL-13. I found him at Yearly Kos last year and invited him to our Downers Grove Township Dems meeting the next Wednesday where I helped convince him to run. He outraised 10 year incumbent Biggert in the second quarter and Sunday his staff organized the biggest canvass this district has ever seen, in July no less. In March his campaign sent 100 volunteers next door to help Bill Foster take Denny Hastert's seat on election day.

If you guys downstate in IL-15 or anywhere else don't have a race worth fighting c'mon out to the Chicago burbs. Besides Harper in IL-13, there's IL-11, IL-10, IL-6, and Foster's IL-14 that are in play and can use the help. We phonebank almost every night in Naperville and canvass almost every weekend.

http://www.scottharperforcongress.com/

How is the 50-state plan a failure? What loses are you talking about? We are poised to win big, and not lose much at all, if anything. What the hell are you talking about?

My contribution is Andrew Rice who is running for Senate against Jim Inhofe. He has a blog on huffpo today.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-rice/my-brother-was-killed-wit_b_113305.html

I don't know how much much of a chance he has, but there's always hope. He's raised a good bit of money, so that should help.