Good news!!!

This isn't just good news for today, it's good for the long-range future of the Democratic Party and by extension, for liberals/leftists/progressives in general. Paul Hackett is an Iraq War vet who apparently served in a supply unit and has never referred to any battles that he took part in, so back in the old days he would have been called a REMF. (Natcherly, that's pretty much the position I filled back in my Navy days, so I don't have a problem with that at all.) Hackett has been waging a hard fight and has pulled in money for the campaign via liberal blogs. From The News Blog:

Another note from Bob Brigham

Here's the situation, the Paul Hackett campaign decided to shoot the moon. Ohio's second congressional district favors Republicans by 30 pts. Running a safe campaign would result in failure.

Paul Hackett is a Fighting Democrat and he's gambling, pushing, pull out all of the stops and running like his life depends upon it (if he loses, he'll probably be sent back in Iraq).

To Get Out the Vote, we need to raise $30,000 today.

Update: Well shit, never thought I'd say this but the campaign doesn't need any more money. The goal was $30K, the netroots delived over $40K.

---Bob

[Gillard comments]
Shit, I've NEVER seen that before. A campaign which doesn't need cash. And I'm older than Bob. Even if Hackett loses, we did real good here. Not the DLC, not the DNCC, us, average Americans with $20 and $50 donations. And we stuffed over $40K into his campaign. Sure, it was an off year, mid-summer race with no distractions. We made a hard race, one which got national play, happen in one of the reddest, most conservative districts in the country. And for a candidate who is far less liberal than many of us.

Did we have a litmus test? No. Did we check to see if he met all our personal good Democrat check points? No. He was a Democrat and he got our support. The fact that he didn't cower from Bush and Schmidt is a weak opponent helped, as did his service in Iraq. But unlike the DLC, being a Democrat was enough for a few thousand of us, he didn't have to agree with all of us on everything.

We are not a piggy bank. We do not support people blindly. But when they deserve our support and Hackett did just for making the run, if nothing else, we can fight. And the best part is, even thought we know his winning is long odds, we can ask Mr. Steinbrenner about how that can play out, we gave him the tools to fight and win. We gave him money and time and got him heard. We did that, not the Democratic Party, not the campaign staff, us, average Americans who opened their wallets and gave of their time.

This time, we brought a gun to the gun fight.