We can continue to lick our wounds and play the blame game, or we can regroup and do the job ourselves.  We can all agree that messaging is not the Dems strong suit. We can continue to beg them to wake up and start fighting back or we can become our own think tanks and fire up the people who just don’t get it.

Last night on Rachel Maddow’s show, Gail Collins (progressive columnist) pleaded with the national Democratic leaders to grab and use the “fiscal responsibility” hypocrisy of the Repugs.  Less than 24 hours after the election, Jim DeMint said it was going to be necessary to raise the debt ceiling again.  The tea partiers are counting on the Repugs to slash everything in sight (especially all those “job killing” regs.)  So we have to find a way to explain to anyone who will listen that adding $700 billion (tax cuts for super wealthy Americans) to the national debt does NOT reduce the total debt.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  Then how come voters can be bamboozled into thinking we can have tax cuts for the rich and still reduce the debt?  Because the other side is expert at bait and switch.

Fiscal responsibility is just one issue.  Then there’s Karl Rove’s “climate is done” statement. And the new House leaders are already lining up witnesses for hearings in the spring to “prove” that climate change is a “hoax.”

And then there’s the repeal of health care reform. Mitch McConnell already is using (and you can be damned sure every Repug will repeat) Health Care Spending Bill to describe the Affordable Care Act.

President Obama has invited the Repug leaders to a White House dinner to discuss the economy, taxes etc.  I hope he has a “taster” check his soup for him.

It doesn’t look like we’re going to get any help from the national or state Dem leaders as far as pushing back against right wing muggers, so we’ll have to do it ourselves. If everyone who posts on this blog finds 10 other sane folks, they can form their own think tank. Repeated often enough, our message will find receptive ears.

Yes, I know I’m spittin’ in the wind, but I’m Irish and don’t like getting stomped on.  

Brian Zuzenak was recently appointed Executive Director of the Missouri Democratic Party. I spoke with him last week at the state party headquarters in Jefferson City:

Show Me Progress: So, you’ve started your tenure here just a few days ago. And you, you’ve had previous experience in Missouri politics?

Brian Zuzenak: I have. I start, I actually started my career in politics here. Actually, while I was still in college down at Missouri State. And worked on my first legislative race in 2000 for a, it was a, open seat, open state House seat in Springfield that we were probably not, I, it was, it was, very, one of those toss up districts, this was before redistricting. It was a decent seat for us, but were running, unfortunately we were running against the former incumbent who had come back to take the seat back. And, and, you know, I didn’t really, [laugh] I didn’t really know what I was doing at all. I was trying to finish college and I had done an internship up at the capitol for Representative Liese in the, during session. And had gone back to school and really enjoyed politics and sort of got bit by the political bug. Probably not for the first time, but sort of the first time I really became engaged in politics. And went back and had the opportunity to run that, that House seat, We were unfortunately, came up short by a couple of points…

…And from there I actually up to Jefferson City and worked for the legislative caucuses in ’02, which was the big, it was the big redistricting year. And, of course, that was the first year that term limits were in effect, so I think of the hundred and sixty three members I think we lost more, eighty-three just due to term limits. So it was a very, it was a very busy election cycle. Of course we had, Senator Carnahan was running for reelection at the top of the ticket. And it was a very busy year. And, unfortunately, a very unsuccessful year for Democrats not only in the Missouri, but all over the country. We, we ended up losing the House, had lost the Senate the year before in a special election after, after Joe Maxwell had gotten elected to Lieutenant Governor.

SMP: In, in more recent history you, you did a congressional campaign. [crosstalk]

Brian Zuzenak: I, right. I went, went, took a leave of absence from Missouri, went to Nashville, Tennessee for about five years. Did some legislative work there and then went to work for the administration for about a year. And really decided that I missed politics and missed the campaign life. And the opportunity to work with Judy Baker in the Ninth [Congressional District] came and I jumped at it. And could not have been happier for the decision I made. I was a little hesitant because I had sort of planned a life around getting, not necessarily around getting out of politics, but creating a little more stability in my life. And, but the, you know, it’s, it’s as most political folks understand, it’s a tough thing to walk away from. And there’s really not another job out there that makes you feel like you’re having an impact on peoples’ lives. And feeling like you’re making a difference. And I think that’s what’s so addictive about this job and this career.

So I came back and ran Judy’s [Baker] race and we won the primary. Probably most folks did not expect us to win the primary. But ended up winning the primary by thirteen points and went into the general with high hopes came up just a little short. Two points, eight thousand votes…

…And had gone back to Nashville and was sort of pondering other life paths and when the opportunity came to be Executive Director of the, my home state, I jumped at it and said, “Absolutely! I would love to do that.”

SMP: With the, the 2010 cycle, there are gonna be a lot of races and, you know, obviously at the, the top of the ticket would be the Senate race…

Brian Zuzenak: Sure.

SMP: And the State Auditor. But there are, you know, obviously the state House of Representatives is going to be very, very important and it’s close.

Brian Zuzenak: Sure.

SMP: So the, the state party is obviously going to do a lot to try and, you know, to turn the House.

Brian Zuzenak: We, we are. The Governor has, has sort of made that one of his big goals for the election cycle. Certainly we want to elect a Democratic Senator in, in Robin Carnahan and, and most certainly we want to reelect the State Auditor. But I think sort of the Governor sees the legislature as, as something that very much impacts him on a daily basis in terms of his ability to get legislation passed. So I think that’s why he has set this out as one of his big priorities. And, and so we’re gearing up in that effort. Starting to recruit candidates starting to raise money, do all the things we need to do in ’09 so that ’10 can be a successful year for us.

SMP: …With changes and everything else, you have to deal with new staff, and everything else. Do you feel that you’re, you’re able to attract good, qualified people?

Brian Zuzenak: Oh, I think so. I mean, you know, I think Missouri gets a bad rap sometimes nationally for not being the most exciting place in the world, but certainly, as the 2010 election approaches there’s not, there’s not very many states out there that you would say have more going on. You know we do have this top tier U.S. Senate race, which I think in and of itself is a huge draw for folks to come in and start working in state. But also, just the sheer volume of, of state legislative races that we have going on, there’s lots of ways for people to get engaged who have never been engaged before, and, and take an opportunity to run a state House race or be engaged that way. In ways that they would not have been able to be engaged on a top level race like, like the Secretary of State’s race for Senate. And that’s why I encourage folks to get involved on the state lege…, level because you, there are benefits to that like being, having a lot of time with the candidate and sort of learning lots of different aspects of the campaign. I mean as a campaign manager for a state House race you end up having to do everything ’cause you’re usually the only staffer. And so I think it is a great opportunity to for folks to get involved in the process initially. And, and they learn a lot and they figure out quickly, “I like to do this. I don’t like to do this.” And then they can go from there and sort of hone their skills in a specific area.

SMP: What do you think are the prospects for success in 2010?

Brian Zuzenak: Well, it’s, it’s always tough to say this far out. For sure. But certainly, at this moment we’re optimistic. The initial fundraising reports from the Senate race are very favorable. I think that Robin outraised Roy Blunt two to one. Which is great. And I hope she continues to keep it up. The Governor’s numbers continue to be very strong. And, and so I think that, you know, nationally Democratic numbers seem to be strong, the President’s numbers seem to be very strong. I think at this moment we, we feel very optimistic. But, everybody knows that can change in a heartbeat. And so, that, that, to sit here and make predictions about what the environment is gonna look like in November of twenty ten is, is not really a, a very productive thing to do. But we’re, we’re hopeful at this moment. We think that things are, are headed in the right direction and we hope they continue…

SMP: Well, thank you very much.

Brian Zuzenak: Thank you.

A commenter at Fired Up makes an excellent point: as pretty as the Missouri Democratic Party website is, it’s devoid of regularly updated content.

In fact, a lot of the same flaws I noted in Maida Coleman’s website are present in the MDP website, too. It’s not something that someone would check on a regular basis for new information – aside from the upcoming events section, there is virtually no new information since Robin Carnahan’s announcement of her candidacy for US Senate. It isn’t a hub that collects potential volunteers and contributors and steers them to opportunities, nor does it spur visitors to create their own ways to contribute to the party’s efforts. And there are no prominent links to any Democratic presence on social networking and media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The best I can say about it is that at least the information that it does provide is better organized and presented than Maida’s website, with contribution buttons front and center.

I wonder why the MDP can’t get it together on the web front. And I hope Robin Carnahan does a better job when her full campaign website finally goes live.

Remember when Dick Cheney was caught in a lie about how China and Cuba were drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico? Republican Sam Graves, the first Republican to get a fundraising visit from both Bush and Cheney this cycle, is still repeating the lie.

The Missouri Democratic Party has him nailed on video.

Find out how you can get this clown out of office by going to Kay Barnes’ website right now.

UPDATE: TPM Election Central got Graves’ spokesman to confirm that Graves is sticking to the discredited story.

When I opened my New York Times this morning and saw the headline that Obama is taking the offensive, and challenging McCain in traditional republican areas, I did the happy dance!  Barack Obama is openly embracing the 50 State Strategy and spurning the cynical DLC model of falling back on traditional liberal enclaves and writing us off out here in the middle.

It’s a glorious day!  It is a day that this red-state riffraff has been waiting for with bated breath  since the day John Kerry punked us in October 2004 and sealed our fate to suffer four years of Blunt-force trauma at the hands of a couple of juvenile brats posing as a governor and his lobbyist brother.

Some of us have been pissed off at Rahm Emanuel and the DLC limousine liberals ever since.

Dr. Dean  resonates with us because he listens to our concerns and treats Missouri like our eleven electoral votes matter – because in 2000, they sure as hell did.  In 2000, aWol took this swing state by a mere 80,000 votes, and if he hadn’t, our votes would have swung the electoral equation to Gore, even without Florida, and spared the entire world the abortion of government that has been the bu$h administration.

So yeah, we matter, god-damnit.   Not only that, we have traditional Democratic roots that predate the founding of the state!  Yes!  There were Democrats in Missouri before there was a Missouri!  The Missouri Democratic Party is the oldest continually-operating political party west of the Mississippi River, and the wingnuts only seized the state lege in 2000 (thanks to term limits, which have been a monumental disaster for the state).

Given the past eight years, and the indignities this president and the party he poisoned have heaped upon this nation – all of us, not just blue-state Americans –  are pissed off and ready to put up a fight. I want a champion, someone who will throw down the gauntlet and challenge the conventional wisdom.  Someone who will take the fight to them in every state and keep them on the defensive.  While they are still scrambling to explain the latest lobby-gate revelation (Lindsey Graham didn’t even try this morning, he just mouthed platitudes) Obama is hiring the mastermind behind Hillary Clinton’s Ohio win and setting up the chessboard to take the state, and with it McCain’s queen.

Oh, my, yes.  Reading todays paper brought a long-overdue thousand-watt smile to my face.

Mr. Obama has moved in recent days to transform his primary organization into a general election machine, hiring staff members, sending organizers into important states and preparing a television advertisement campaign to present his views and his biography to millions of Americans who followed the primaries from a distance.

In one telling example, he is moving to hire Aaron Pickrell, the chief political strategist of Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio – who helped steer Mrs. Clinton to victory in that state’s primary – to run his effort against Mr. McCain there. In another, aides said, he has tapped Dan Carroll, an opposition researcher who gained fame digging up information on opponents’ records for Bill Clinton in 1992, to help gather information about Mr. McCain. That is the latest evidence that, for all the talk on both sides about a new kind of politics, the general election campaign is likely to be bloody.

Mr. Obama’s campaign is considering hiring Patti Solis Doyle, a longtime associate of Mrs. Clinton who was her campaign manager until a shake-up in February, the first of what Mr. Obama’s aides said would be a number of hires from the Clinton campaign.

[Click here to go to the NYT interactive map]

I don’t pretend to be an expert or anything, but I do have a working knowledge of Missouri history, and how that history dovetails with the politics of the state.

For instance, I know that no Democrat has won the White House without carrying Missouri since the 1850s.  In fact, this state has only gone to the loser once in the last century – when our grandparents voted for Stevenson over the sitting President Eisenhower in 1956.   Not exactly a traditional republican stronghold, are we?

In fact, I think if the New York Times had done a bit more research they would have made Missouri a battleground state leaning red instead of reliably republican on that map.   Look at the primary results from the Secretary of States office:

If you do the math, you see that of over 1.4 million ballots cast in Missouri on Super Tuesday, 58.27% were Democratic ballots.  McCain and Obama both won the state, but the numbers paint a bleak landscape for the McCain camp.  McCain won 33% of the republican vote, with a raw vote tally of 194,053.  Both Democratic frontrunners garnered more than double the votes McCain was able to muster.

Then there is the latest Rasmussen Missouri poll, which shows Obama a one-point favorite (43% to 42%,  with 15% choosing “other” (9%)or “not sure” (6%).  You can look at the poll here, and see just how out of step McCain is with the concerns of Missouri voters.  

And worse for him still are the 31.5% of republicans in this state who voted for Mike Huckabee.  With over 185,000 republican ballots cast for Huckabee, that is a lot of republicans that might opt to sit on their hands this November and skip the presidential race.  Remember, 80,000 votes in 2000 made the difference.  With the mobilization Obama has mustered, it won’t take too many aggrieved Missouri conservatives opting to vote for Bob Barr, skip the race at the top of the ticket and only vote in the state and local races, or simply go fishing on election day to have an impact which color the photoshop wizards use to color Missouri on the map the night of November 4.

This is one red-state Democrat that is fired up and ready to go, and has been since January 1995, when the Contract on America was executed, and I have been absolutely spoilin’ for a bare-knuckled brawl since the supremes selected in December 2000.

This is the political season I have been waiting for my entire life.  It is high time the Democrats came out swingin’ – and hot-damn if we don’t have someone this season with a hell of a reach.

I’ve been taken aback by some of the harsh rhetoric in comments aimed at State Senator Chris Koster, with the epithets “Flopster” and “not a real Democrat” being the most commonly applied. The first thing I think when I read these comments is, “Are these people out of their freakin’ minds?”

Anytime you pick up a seat by a member of the opposing party switching sides, that’s good news. It means you have one more vote in the legislature for the issues that your party cares about, it means you didn’t have to spend thousands of dollars to pick up the seat, it means you have a credible voice arguing that the other side is just too extreme. I’ll applaud Chris Koster for helping us out like that, just as I’ll applaud any Republican who changes their mind about the direction their party has been taking the last decade.

The charge of opportunism strikes me in particular as a bit hollow. Yeah, Koster’s term-limited in 2012, but surely Koster could expect an easier opportunity to come along in the next six years than facing the House Minority Leader and a respected female attorney from St. Louis in a 3-way fight as a newcomer to the Democratic Party.

Now about that Attorney General’s race… more below the fold.

Obviously, the Attorney General’s race is the source of the anger. If Koster had no interest in the office, I doubt that he would have drawn criticism here, or I certainly hope that would be the case. And Koster does have some ‘splainin’ to do, as a Missouri Provote analysis of Koster’s voting record reveals. To even have a chance at my vote, much less my vocal support, in the AG race, Koster has got to explain why he voted against the way he truly believes and, if he changed his mind, how his thinking has evolved on some of these votes. All of this in addition to the baseline questions: “Why are you qualified to be Missouri’s Attorney General, and why should we choose you over the others running for the same office?” After all, he’s running in the primary against two candidates without that baggage.

In any event, I hope that Democrats around the state will welcome Chris Koster into the party AND give him proper scrutiny if and when he enters the AG race.