Earlier, I attended the The Future Leaders Panel at YearlyKos, which featured the following brave '06 congressional challengers going for another round next year: Charlie Brown (CA-04), Darcy Burner (WA-08), Larry Grant (ID-01), Eric Massa (NY-29), Scott Kleeb (NE-03), Dan Seals (IL-10), and Gary Trauner (WY-AL.)

As many electoral successes as we had in red and purple districts last year, these panelists represented some of the more heartbreaking close calls. In fact there was a running joke that it was the losers' panel, but as one of the panelists said, "We are redefining the word loser. I am a proud loser." Charlie Brown put it well when he turned the joke on its head and said proudly, "The reason we're winners is that most of us got more votes than any Democrat ever had before in our districts." But the most poignant reason the loser moniker doesn't fit is that these challengers, despite falling short in votes in their districts, undeniably contributed to our winning the majority last year. They forced the Republicans to spend precious time and money in these districts, which they'd taken for granted just a cycle before, and that was time and money that couldn't be spent defending other districts. In other words, sitting on that stage was the 50-state strategy incarnate.

Another interesting thread that ran through the discussion was just how much has changed in 2 years. Scott Kleeb said he "literally knocked on the DCCC's door" last year and told them he was running in NE-03. "And they said, that's nice." Now they're all getting offers of support whereas last year they couldn't get past the receptionist. Sure, it's a function of their having proved themselves viable last year, but in addition, there is a greater openness to grassrots and netroots candidates on the part of the DC establishment. All of the challengers on that stage gave credit to the netroots for not only providing the support when no one else would, but also for challenging the DCCC to pay attention to these races. And they urged us to continue to do so.

More from the convention later...