On this day of relief and celebration, I'd like to take a moment to remember all those in the progressive movement who didn't make it across the finish line yesterday.

All the candidates and campaigns who didn't quite make it, or in some cases didn't even come close despite pouring their blood and treasure into the fight. Being from Texas, I'm painfully aware that not all Democrats won big in 2008.

For those of us who've been involved in progressive politics for awhile it seemed like the interminable Bush years would never end. The bitter losses of 2000, 2002 and 2004 building up layers of scars and heartbreak. But we fought through it and damn I'm proud of my country and my party today.

But there were millions of Americans who didn't live to see the repudiation of the Bush era, despite working so hard to achieve it.

Let's take a moment to remember our fallen comrades and especially to all those lost on 9/11, in Afghanistan and Iraq, to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike and every other disaster of the Bush/Cheney era.

And let's remember those whose loving marriages were suddenly declared illegal in California by Prop 8 and every other state where bigotry has been written into the law. That fight isn't over, we will not forget. We shall overcome.

I'd especially like to remember three people:

Madelyn Dunham, the grandmother of the President-Elect who didn't live to see it, but who did get to vote for him. We all owe her a big debt of gratitude.

Fred Baron, a legendary trial lawyer who won many victories for the little guy in the court room and poured millions of his own dollars into the Texas Democratic Party in the last few years, pretty much single-handedly keeping it alive. He passed away on October 30th.

And Dr. Andy Miracle, a friend of mine who wasn't any kind of big political player but whose passion to end our national nightmare inspired me greatly. Andy had a cerebral hemorrhage just before the 2004 election and never got to vote that year. I think of Andy every election day as I vote.

I'd like to share one of my favorite poems "To those who've fail'd" by Walt Whitman:

To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast,
To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers--to over-ardent travelers--to pilots on
their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition--I'd rear
laurel-cover'd monument,
High, high above the rest--To all cut off before their time,
Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench'd by an early death.

And for those of us who only died political deaths this year, you'll be back.

To end on a happy note of political resurrection, my good friend Richard Morrison, whose long-shot 2004 campaign against Tom DeLay was one of the first netroots campaigns waged on the national level got his first electoral victory yesterday. Richard, an environmental trial lawyer who's been representing those that the big developers have paved over, flooded out, and ripped off for more than a decade now has been elected to the County Commission of Fort Bend County , Texas. I have a feeling that there will be a lot less irresponsible development going on during his term. Congratulations, Richard.

Take a moment to make your dedications to fallen comrades and second place candidates in the comments.

There's more...

Two years ago I met Lowell Feld.

I was working with Jerome Armstrong at Mark Warner's Forward Together PAC, testing the national waters for a very successful Virginia Governor. Part of my job was reaching out to bloggers in key states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Naturally we needed to have the strong support of bloggers from Warner's home state of Virginia.

It didn't take long to figure out that getting Lowell Feld of RaisingKaine on board the Warner train was crucial.

Lowell had other things on his mind though. He was busy helping Jim Webb win a contentious U.S. Senate primary and didn't really want to discuss the 2008 Presidential campaign. As much as he liked Mark Warner, he had other things on his plate.

Over the remainder of 2006, as Mark Warner focused on helping elect Democrats, I stayed in close touch with Lowell. He had joined Webb as a full-time staffer, leaving behind a secure government job for the stormy seas of the campaign trail. When the poll numbers weren't what he wanted to see, he vented to me and I tried to use my decade's experience on the campaign trail to give him perspective.

When "Macaca" hit, we IM'd back and forth trying to figure out how to turn George Allen's blunder into a perfect storm for the Webb campaign.

After the nail-biter of an election we celebrated the victory and began talking about what was next for the two of us. In particular, we discussed possible ways in which we might be able to keep contributing to the netroots movement which had helped revitalize the Democratic Party -- and, more broadly, our democracy -- over the past few years.

We looked back with awe at the amazing campaign cycle we'd just been through, one which saw Democrats win majorities in both houses of Congress against long odds, and one which saw not at least half a dozen scrappy, underfunded candidates -- including Jim Webb -- beat BOTH the Democratic establishment in the primaries and the GOP in the general.

We knew something amazing had happened. And, because we had been behind the scenes working the internet for Democrats, we had a nuts-and-bolts perspective on what really made the big wins of 2006 possible. We were both pretty sure it wasn't Rahm Emmanuel's "move to the center." We were also both sure that wouldn't have happened without the explosion of citizen activism called the "netroots".

Somehow, the idea of writing a book to tell the story of the grassroots movement that made the difference for Democrats in 2006 came up. We'd both been involved since the beginning (2003) -- me as a Howard Dean activist in Texas, Lowell as a part of Wes Clark's netroots campaign and as founder of the Virginia political blog Raising Kaine (in January 2005).

Lowell hooked us up with a book deal and the next six months were a flurry of research, interviews, digging up old notes and emails and writing. We couldn't tell all the important stories -- honestly we couldn't even tell a small fraction of the important stories -- but we tried to tell the stories we knew the best and one or two others where we had access to great sources.

The book we wrote, Netroots Rising, is officially released tomorrow. As a supplement to the book, we'll be posting some of the many excellent interviews we did during our research for the book. We also plan to conduct new interviews and to write about some of the great stories that we didn't have room for in the book that will be posted on the Netroots Rising site.

SusanG at DailyKos was kind enough to give us a very good review on Daily Kos today. She neatly summarized a key part of the book, something that we worked very hard to pull off:

This project is just beginning. We've made huge leaps since 2002 -- when there was effectively no way for non-wealthy individuals with no inside connections to impact the political system -- to now, when many of us have found ways to come together online and off to make many small impacts that cumulatively can be very large. There is an enormous amount of work remaining, but we wanted to tell some of the stories of 2002-2006 while the memories were fresh.  

There's more...

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking over email with a famous election prognosticator (well, he is at least as famous as election prognosticators can hope to be). He told me that the netroots predicted that the OH-02 special election would be close, and had done so much earlier than had any professional forecasters. I responded that until the last week of the campaign, I didn't think it would be close, but that I was determined to get involved in that race anyway. At the time, I didn't care how conservative or Republican the district was, or how slim Paul Hackett's chances to win the district may or may not have been. As much of a forecaster as I try to be, that campaign had nothing to do with forecasting. After 2004, I wanted to fight everywhere, and in the summer of 2005, there were not many places to pick an electoral fight besides OH-02. I know that a lot of other people online felt the same way, especially after they were introduced to Paul Hackett. In a way, it was almost better that the district was an extreme longshot, because then we would have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Looking back on that election now, it really was a good idea to get involved, even if most of us thought Hackett would get pasted. A couple of hours ago, Survey USA released the results of a new poll in OH-02, showing incumbent Jean Schmidt only narrowly ahead of Victoria Wulsin, 45-42. Not only is that a statistical dead heat, it is actually one point closer than the final margin in OH-02 last summer. I have to believe that one of the main reasons that OH-02 is honestly close in 2006 is because the netroots threw so much into it in 2005. We helped bring an anti-Bush message into OH-02, and it is sticking. We helped bring new activist excitement into OH-02, and it is sticking. We helped reveal to voters in OH-02 that Jean Schmidt is an empty suit, and that message is sticking. We helped voters grow used to voting against Jean Schmidt, and now she is the first choice of probably only around 25-30% of the voters in the district. Because we helped Paul Hackett and local Dems make a stand in OH-02, we are still competitive in a district where we should just flat out not be competitive.

Perhaps best of all, in a truly fitting bit of irony, one of the reasons we went into OH-02 was so that Republican resources would be stretched thin in the swing districts in 2006. However, as the results in OH-02 revealed last summer, Republican resources have been stretched thin in 2006 because so many seats are competitive. Now, instead of not having enough money for the swing, they actually won't have any money for districts like OH-02 which remain competitive. The NRCC came in with ad buys to help out Schmidt last summer, and partially because of that they won't have anything to help her with this fall. That isn't good for Schmidt, since Victoria Wulsin actually holds a slight cash edge on Schmidt, after Schmidt was forced to blow her wad in a tightly contested primary. Will the NRCC seriously pull money out of districts like PA-07, WA-08, or CT-05 in order to help out candidates in OH-02, WY-AL, or ID-01? Doesn't seem too bloody likely to me.

Making big pushes in longshot districts like OH-02, TX-22, WY-AL, and ID-01 is part of the fifty-state strategy. I love the dividends these longshot challenges are starting to pay. In TX-22 and OH-02, which were assisted by the netroots much earlier than they were assisted by the DCCC, we now have a nearly guaranteed pickup and a shockingly competitive race in districts Bush won by about 30%. Now, we are looking at WY-AL and ID-01, where once again I am convinced we are going to do a lot, lot better than we are supposed to do. The Republican candidates in both districts are pretty pathetic, and not even liked by many of the Republican voters in the area. Even if we don't win, we could help make these seats more competitive in the future. Even if we don't do very well, at the very least it was worth a shot. You never know how many apples will fall from the tree unless you give it a good shake.

There is something else about these longshot challenges that I miss in 2006 now that we are really getting down to brass tacks: the Hackett challenge in the summer of 2005 was really, really fun. I couldn't go to OH-02 because I had a big, movement starting rally in Philly the day after the election, but hot damn the 200 activists at that rally were excited when Patrick Murphy declared he was the "Paul Hackett of Pennsylvania." Everyone knew what it meant, and it really fired people up. Being able to make serious inroads in Republican territory can give us the hope and excitement we need to make inroads in other places. It lets us know that despite our losses, we can still fight Republicans on their turf. It reminds us that there are people ready to vote for our candidates everywhere. It gives us a glimpse of a much more progressive America, and a much more gutsy, feisty Democratic Party. Sometimes, it can even be jus the excitement we need to get us out of ruts during a dull, quiet campaign season.

Let' fight some more of these challenges. Gary Trauner (WY-AL) and Larry Grant (ID-01) are on the netroots page. You can help out Victoria Wulsin here. Don't back down anywhere, and savor the joy of contesting every seat.

Update: It occurrs to me that maybe I was bored thinking about the election in general, but excitied about these races, because there is no way we can beat expectations for the overall national picture. We are supposed to take the House. We are supposed to do well in the Senate. We are supposed to do well among Governors. We are not supposed to do well in these races, though. I guess it coems from being in the blogosphere, where we weren't ever supposed to be meaningful ourselves. If we are supposed to do something, is isn't as much fun, and there is no way we can amaze people anymore.