NOTE FROM JOHN: We're pleased to welcome Paul Hogarth to the blog. Paul will be writing for us on the main site, and on AMERICAblog gay. A little more background on Paul:
Paul Hogarth is a lawyer at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in San Francisco, having worked there since 2000. He has a Bachelors in Political Science from UC Berkeley, and a J.D. from Golden Gate University. Paul made his first run for public office at the age of 22, when he was elected to the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board. After one term, he moved to San Francisco where he is actively involved in local politics. In 2006, Paul was hired as the Managing Editor of Beyond Chron (http://www.beyondchron.org), a blog published by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic that was voted "Best Local Website" in 2008 by the SF Bay Guardian. He is active in the netroots (cross-posting at Daily Kos, Open Left, Huffington Post, Calitics and is now writing at AMERICAblog.) Paul was voted "Best State and Local Blogger" at the Netroots Nation conference in 2010.____________________
Today's latest graphic from Pollster.com, which accompanies this very insightful post on the front page of Daily Kos, illustrates nicely the predicament Democrats are in right now:
Voters are just as angry as they were in 2006 and 2008, and Democrats are gonna get screwed in 2010 because they're the "party in power." I found it a tad insulting at Netroots Nation when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid kept on talking about how much this Congress has accomplished, because we all know what has not been accomplished.
Sure, we got health care reform - but only after Joe Lieberman's extortion killed the public option. Same with Wall Street reform. Meanwhile, we don't have climate change reform or immigration reform - and we probably won't before November.
So what to do about this election? Focus on Democrats who are running against the status quo. That means: (a) the incumbents who had our back and are in tough re-election fights, like Alan Grayson & Carol Shea-Porter, (b) more "red-to-blue" candidates who are running against Republican incumbents and (c) Democratic primary challenges. As voters continue to sour on the status quo, it's our job to make sure progressives don't go down a sinking ship.
