This is also cross-posted from Sullivan. He's doing a pretty good job as morale officer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3ijYVyhnn0

I haven't even seen Les Mis, but I did like this version of it.

Again, Andrew Sullivan gets it, posting a letter from one of his readers (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/are-the-netroot.html):

I just wanted to say thank you so much for being the only blogger (aside from Al Giordano) who gets it. While the rest of the blogosphere (especially the liberal bloggers) lose their heads you are an island of common sense. Patience and Steel. Yes, yes. yes.

It also occurs to me that in a way McCain and Rove have actually simply taken over the liberal blogosphere in some way. They are being played.

Just a few examples---yesterday Obama gave a fantastic interview at the Service Forum. Did the liberal blogs even cover this? No.

He gave a great speech on the trail. Are his town halls even posted or excerpted? No.

Oh it's FAR from over, this week has been one of the worst for us Dems (barring the FANTASTIC day today has been) but I believe truly that the O camp is performing at top level and are doing a fantastic job, knowing EXACTLY what they need to do to win.

We wouldn't be having this conversation had he picked Hillary.

Lets face it, sexism is pretty much dead.

Racism is alive and well.

If he had picked Hillary, we wouldn't be explaining away a huge swing in the polls with fairy tales of GOTV. Jeezus, the dems crow about gotv every four years, and every four years they lose.

Biden has all the impact of a benign tumor - Hillary would've been a dynamic and fantastic campaigner and a 'gloves off' attack dog.

We didn't lose.

Obama did when he snubbed 18 million people who voted Hillary in the primary.

More on this theme:

"Plouffe laid out the theory: the Obama camp isn't that panicked about news cycles, we're looking longer term, he said. Team Obama has sunk massive amounts of money into a huge number of field offices in competitive states (some conservative states aren't worth fighting in and liberal states are in the bag already). At the last comprehensive count, the Obama campaign had 336 field offices around the country, and McCain 101. McCain has probably opened more recently, but the disparity is still striking.

Some state-by-state comparisons are useful. In Ohio, Obama has 33 offices, and McCain nine. In Michigan, it's 22-11. Virginia, 28-6; Iowa, 23-6; New Mexico, 18-1; Missouri, 27-7. You get the picture. Florida is the only competitive state where McCain has more offices, 35-25. That 35 is deeply uncharacteristic for McCain, probably explained by the fact that much of the McCain vote in Florida will be elderly and will need to be driven to the polls on election day.

In addition, the Obama campaign is counting on a large voter-registration effort that's been ongoing in key states since 2006. Twenty-eight of the 50 states enroll voters according to party affiliation, and in those states, Democrats have gained 2 million voters in the last two years, while the Republicans have lost 334,000. Numbers for 2008 alone look like this in some important states: Colorado, 66,516 Democrats to 13,352 Republicans; Florida, 209,422 Democrats to 77,196 Republicans; Iowa, 69,301 Democrats to 7,515 Republicans; Pennsylvania, 98,137 Democrats to just 289 Republicans.

It takes a lot of time and money to register all those people and set up all those offices. The Obama people are betting that the investment will pay off. It is their belief, Plouffe said in Denver, that most people pay more attention to their co-workers and neighbours than they do to television talking heads. And with all those neighbours and co-workers spreading the word on election day, they say they feel good about the situation they've created. Field, they say, will trump news cycle.

So there you have it. Are the Obama people right? The problems with their theory are that all this field-tilling is invisible to pundits, and that there's no way to measure its success until the votes start coming in. In the meantime, McCain is very much winning the visible war, which can be measured day-to-day. And, since he named Palin, enthusiasm on the right is sky high, so he'll have his army of volunteers now, too.

One doesn't doubt that the Obama turnout will be impressive. But there are 51 daily news cycles between now and November 4. Obama certainly needs to win a few of them. So let's sort all that out first. Then we'll talk about the big picture."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/13/uselections2008.usa

Thank you for the post, you did with words what Les Miserable video did in song. It was much needed and appreciated. Brought that sunshine back.

Wouldn't we be well served right now by releasing our 527's to do some heavy lifting -We need to have Move.On call out Saracuda on all her lying .
We need to have Rand Beers call out McCain on his support of premptive . elective wars - ie Iran &the Bush Doctrine ..
We need all of our allied 527's unleashed and lets get our share of these next waning news cycles . Its time also to employ all the lessons learned from the Begala/Carville/ Emmanuel 1992 playbook - do not respond to your opponents attacks- make your opponent respond to your attacks - McCain tries to smear us with lipstick on a pig - we hit him back hard on all of these foreclosures that Team Bush, McCain & Phil Gramm has brought us..
Its time to have a protracted rumble in the MSM , to protect our gains on the ground.,..

Hey,

The Avatars are back !

Nathan, I don't mean to get sentimental, but I want you to know that your posts are ones I regularly read because of your sanity and intelligence. Please keep up the good work.

Chronathan, great post, thanks so much for the excellent grist. Your other, on the McCain inexperienced governor quote, is likewise priceless. I think we are going to get this done.

Everyone needs to give either time or money or both!

What Orlando said the other day:

Do Something. Bitch Later. (The other words melt away, but that's all we need to know or do.)

This is great, I volunteer out of one of the Missouri St Louis headquarters and I'll tell you, its a constant hive of activity out there. One of our bigger problems is people show up and we don't have enough phones for people to phone bank. This morning I sent three people off to canvas the neighborhoods, identifying McCain, Obama and Undecided voters. We are working hard here and yea, Rasmus say's were 5 points down. Who cares. We are going to get every single Obama supporter registered and out voting.

I am a polling wonk, my homepage is fivethirtyeight.com, but I know that our efforts are flying under the radar. That is fine with me, lets shock the world November 4th. Chrono, great post as always.

This is great, I volunteer out of one of the Missouri St Louis headquarters and I'll tell you, its a constant hive of activity out there. One of our bigger problems is people show up and we don't have enough phones for people to phone bank. This morning I sent three people off to canvas the neighborhoods, identifying McCain, Obama and Undecided voters. We are working hard here and yea, Rasmus say's were 5 points down. Who cares. We are going to get every single Obama supporter registered and out voting.

I am a polling wonk, my homepage is fivethirtyeight.com, but I know that our efforts are flying under the radar. That is fine with me, lets shock the world November 4th. Chrono, great post as always.

Yes, had he picked Hillary, we'd be busy fighting off the HUGE negative campaign the Repugs would be waging based on her baggage...now that would be fun! They were practically salivating at the opportunity to use her and Bill as the focus of their campaign. Isn't it too bad they didn't get the opportunity. Obama is smarter than that.

Enough with the Hillary crapola. She lost. She lost because of a very poorly managed campaign. Plus, she may not have wanted to be VP as she would have had to put Bill through the vetting process and well, who knows what that might have revealed. Maybe not anything really bad, but it certainly would have given McCain some new ammunition to add to the rest of the Clinton history.

The more you repeat this, the more it adds negativity to the campaign. Hillary is of better use to us in the Senate under an Obama administration - who better to help push through health care changes than HRC in the Senate, especially since Teddy might not be able to provide his usual leadership due to his health? Or has a cabinet member - Health & Human Services?

Let's drop this bs once and for all. It plays into the Repugs hands and continues to divide us.