Over the past few months, I've noticed that the Kaine-Kilgore race has not, generally speaking, received a great deal of attention in the national blogosphere. Frankly, that suprises me. Although Democrats were understandably frustrated, angry, even depressed over the November 2004 results, I expected for the most part that people would quickly turn their attention back to fighting for Democrats and progressives at the local and state levels. And I've certainly seen SOME of that here in Virginia, for example on the David Englin for Delegate race. Overall, though, the focus has appeared to be more on what Bush and the Republican Congress have been screwing up -- their corruption and gross mismanagement of our country -- plus speculation about the 2008 Presidential race than on races like Kaine-Kilgore, than on working for Tim Kaine or to take back Congress in 2006. Of course, we DEFINITELY need to shine a bright light on BushCo. misdeeds, no doubt about that, because we certainly can't count on the corporate-owned, Republican-dominated "mainstream media" to do it. And we also need to continue building our online Democratic communities. However, we also have to fight for what we believe, and by this I am referring more to "on the ground" activities than to discussions on blogs and chat groups.
With the latest, highly encouraging poll results from Mason-Dixon,, excellent news on the money front for Virginia Democratic candidates, and with the elections just over 3 months away, now appears to be a perfect time to start cranking things up a notch or two. It appears that the national Democratic blogosphere is starting to pay attention to Virginia, with front-page stories in MyDD and DailyKos about the Mason-Dixon poll results. We also had the successful event the other night with Barack Obama and Tim Kaine in Arlington, so it looks like things are starting to pick up. I say that's a great thing. Let's keep it going and build on the momentum of all that, while we take advantage of a Kilgore campaign that's obviously in turmoil after Jerry Boy's snarling, lying, mean-spirited performance at the Greenbrier a couple of weekends ago, the Halifax Cantaloupe Festival incident (in which a Kilgore staffer got "pushy" with a young, female Kaine volunteer while Jerry Kilgore stood by, saying not a word).