One year ago, in the fall of 2005, I was locked down in the process of ghost-writing a grant proposal to fund an effort to empower blogs to help Democrats take back the House of Representatives.

My first task in writing that proposal was to convince people a Democratic take-back of the House was even remotely possible.

Things have changed.

None of us will know the reults of the 2006 mid-term elections till...well..later tonight.  But here's a couple reasons I'm confident and here's some of the exit poll data I'll be looking out for...

There's more...

It's one week out and there's two things that are clear about the progressive blogosphere:

First, the 2005/2006 period represented a test run for any number of projects and concepts that we will be seeing a great deal more of in the years to come.

The Bloggers' Convention (Yearlykos), campaigns like Use it or Lose It, ACTBlue pages, the rise of Local Blogging, Netroots participation in cultivating and supporting progressive Primary candidates, citizen-created political Media and Video (YouTube), Wide-field targeting a la the 50 State strategy, and online cooperative online projects like we've seen here on MyDD and elsewhere...to name just a few.

Second, looking at all these trends and efforts, it becomes more and more clear that many of these projects will not go dormant after the election.

Far from it.

I would argue that we are now engaged in a two year battle for governance in the United States, of which the 2006 mid-terms are just the opening bell, and in which, the netroots will play an increasingly important role on the national and local levels.

As exciting as this election is, it is just the trial run for the emerging progressive netroots movement. We are entering the era of Blogging 2.0.

There's more...