Evening Open Thread: State Races In The Blogs

[SeminalBlog]

While it's hard to avoid Presidential politics, you can if you want to! (I'm not sure if I want to…but I'm trying!)
There's a lot going on down-ticket these days. As an overview, the Senate Guru has a great interview with the DSCC's Executive Director, J.B. Poersch. They talk about DSCC strategy, helping more Democrats win Senate seats, and Bill Belichick. This quote jumped out at me:

SG: Along that line, you look at the only freshman Democrat up for re-election in '08, Mark Pryor, has no Republican opponent, and you look at deadlines having passed in South Dakota, Iowa, and Montana and Democratic incumbents don't face any high-profile Republican opposition. What do you attribute that to?
JBP: Some of the things we've already talked about. I think Republicans are judging this to be a difficult environment. I think that a lot of their potential candidates have backed down because they don't want to spend the next year defending the preceding eight years of the Bush administration. I think they're feeling that, to come out and run now, is to start from behind - and that's not a place where they want to be. For our part, we want to be able to concentrate on picking up seats.

From the excitement surrounding the primaries (presidential politics - (*)(*)(*)(*)!) to the huge retirement rate among Republicans, it's going to be a good year down-ticket for Democrats.
In that vein, Democratic institutions are going after vulnerable Republicans hard. Howard Dean's Democracy for America has endorsed one of the Senate candidates we've been following - Andrew Rice in Oklahoma. I love the framing they use - elect Andrew Rice to beat a Republican extremist. Inhofe is an extremist.
And finally, after being brutally beaten by progressive hero Donna Edwards, Maryland's representative Al Wynn has resigned. He couldn't even bear the shame to finish out his term! Ok, Wonkette puts it a bit better…
It's going to be a good year. As Matt Browner-Hamlin points out, "Democrats should [and I argue are beginning to] speak with pride, conviction, and strength because our ideas are better than Republican ideas."
And with that, what's on your mind? This is an open thread!
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