we will take that seat.

to Mr. Ngo, but Thomas Jefferson graduated from William and Mary with the highest honors when he was 19.  Let's not forget some of the great Virginians!

I should have said "in the last century." :)

Lowell, I think this is the first typo I've seen from you that involved hitting the adjacent key. Odd typo correction coming from me, given that I do that about 50 times a week.

With respect to Kenton's assessment re Chuck vs. FitzSimmonds, I don't agree with him. Assuming, of course, that his volunteers don't get complacent and fail in our GOTV duties.

I happened to have met Bob at the Bull Run precinct Tues. He was introduced to me by one of my Republican friends at Heritage Hunt. (I'll tell you later what I was doing there in addition to talking to an HH Dem. poll worker about possible "split shifts" so not all poll workers have to be there from 5:30 A.M. until 8-9 P.M. in 2008.)

Bob seems to be a nice guy who knows he can't win with negative attacks, and I saw no indication that he'd want to even if it might get him some votes. CERTAINLY, he's no right wing extremist and fully understands how important it is to voters in the 29th to help Kaine get some real transportation relief to NOVA.

Although neither man said so directly, I think they were basically telling me that they realize the only way Bob has a chance to win is to do a better GOTV than they've ever done in an off-year, and they know it's going to be difficult to recruit enough volunteers to do that. That's especially true at HH, where the GOP residents are showning very little interest in volunteering. In fact they had the same problem last year; the (mostly weathy) HH replublicans mostly feel that "someone else" should be doing the actual work. I also noticed that there were no volunteer sign-up sheets to be seen.

I think the more basic problem Bob has, at least at my Bull Run precinct and throughout the Gainesville District, is that he can't stray far from Chuck's positions. It's hard for Bob to convince people to vote for him with just a "vote for change" without specifics he can use in a comparison between himself and Chuck.

I'll be attending Colgan's kickoff fundraiser. It will be interesting and informative to see how much money each has collected (and has in the bank) at the time of the first reporting period. Bob is going to need a lot of money to counter what's likely to be a large Colgan volunteer advantage. If Colgan has both a large money advantage and a large volunteer "boots on the ground" GOTV advantage by Labor Day, Bob will be in a difficult catch-up situation.

Bottom line for me with respect to the 29th Senate seat is that, if we don't forget to include Chuck in our overall campaigning, I don't seen any reason to believe that this is a vulnerable seat. To quote Sarah, this one is ours to lose. What we need to do, of course, is to work as if it were vulnerable to make sure that it is a secure seat.

My analysis and conclusions, as always, are offered for your consideration and comments.

How's that for an attempt to head this blog back toward civility where we can start to refocus on our goal of getting Dems. elected in Novemember ? Venting is necessary at times, and can be beneficial if we don't overdo it; but we've seen more than enough.

Please, let's all calm down now so we can redirect our passion and energy toward our common goal to Make Virginia Blue. Agreed ? Just say yes and mean it, and we will Take Back Virginia.

  T.C.

Proud to be a Bruce Roemmelt volunteer. 

Thanks.