Just to play devil's advocate/stir the pot a little bit...

As Adam B and Jedinecny noted above, Wyden isn't the first Senator or statewide politician to steer clear of opportunities to get a home-state colleague of the opposite party booted out of office.  Are there any Senate insiders who might have some reasonable explanation for why you'd stay out of a race like this?

My two theories:

1) The 2 senators from the same state have to work closely with each other on home state issues, so deep involvement in getting your colleague kicked out of office might compromise your ability work with him down the road.  So this isn't putting "personal relationships above agenda," it's more "avoid taking a risk that could further your own agenda in a big way but could just as easily backfire and sink your agenda."

2) If you go out on a limb for somebody in a big way and they lose, you lose face.  Wyden, Reid, etc. decided their involvement wouldn't really help all that much, so why bother?  Beyond raising $, I'm personally skeptical about how much how much clout most Senators have to get influence the outcome of home state races other than their own.

Anybody have examples of Senators who did try to get a colleague kicked out?  The top example I can think of is Frist campaigning against Daschle, and  my take on that episode is that was an example of the exact sort of putting politics above all else (i.e. a functional relationship with the opposition party) that cost the GOP their majority.

I agree--we're on the march.  The big question in my mind--what happens post-Bush?  So much of this outpouring of energy and innovation seems to be in reaction to the disaster that has been the Bush presidency.  

What happens to all of this if we have a President Obama or Hillary?  The pitfall is that too many people decide, "phew, we have a Democrat in the White House now, so everything is OK," and too much energy/momentum is lost to push the Democrats in Congress and the White House to enact truly progressive policies on health care, trade, environment, etc.  Or that the growing progressive infrastructure declines, leaving the right to re-emerge as a force in 2010 or 2012.

Of course, it's hardly a foregone conclusion that we'll elect a Democratic President in 2008, so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself...

If anybody is interested in taking an even longer view and reading a progressive/populist take on the history of colonial America through the present day, I highly recommend Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States."  I'm guessing many people here may have already read it but figured I'd give it a plug just in case...

I am disappointed in the seeming reluctance of Democratic leaders in Congress to take decisive action to end the war, but I am not at all surprised.  I think we (the netroots) have figured out how to have an impact around election time--use blogs and other web-based entities to raise money, recruit volunteers, promote stories missed by the MSM, etc.  But I think we're still finding our way in terms of learning how to have an impact on how the Democratic majority governs, which is understandable given that this is new territory for us.

One idea--we should use the netroots/blogosphere to raise money and build support for a campaign to put an organizer in every Congressional District and have the organizers work to build local pressure on the Representative to get us out of Iraq.  That would be awesome and have a big impact.  Now, we probably couldn't raise enough $ and find enough organizers to put somebody in every Congressional District, but even 30-50 key districts would make a big difference.

No, you're right, that part of Frank's story doesn't sound like a kowtow.  I'll concede that Frank is probably among the ones we'll have to worry about the least in terms of how the donations influence his behavior.  But I am still deeply uncomfortable with Democratic committee chairs and other members of the leadership raising campaign money from the industries they oversee.  And while Frank probably isn't much to worry about, I am genuinely concerned about the Dingells, Hoyers, Rahm's, etc.  This country is clearly in much better shape with the Democrats in charge of Congress, but it's reasonable to assume that enacting truly meaningful progressive reforms will be much harder as long as the Democrats are dependent on corporate campaign cash.

True the NRSC did poorly fundraising in 06, but that's not necessarily evidence that attacking bloggers in fundraising appeals doesn't work.  I would venture a guess that poor NRSC fundraising was mostly related to donors being angry w/ Dole for attacking Laffey, angry about runaway spending in Congress, etc.  In reality, we just don't know whether the NRSC failed because their donors thought the blogger fundraising appeals were lame or because their donors were disaffected for other reasons.  That said, my gut tells me the blogger appeals probably weren't effective--I bet NRSC donors are relatively older folks, which I would think makes them even more unlikely to know about us.

I agree--at this point, it's ludicrous for a GOP candidate to think that using the traditional media to attack a Democratic candidate's connections to the blogosphere will really hurt the Democratic candidate in any way, given how few people know who bloggers are or understand what they do.

However, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that attacking bloggers does work in GOP fundraising appeals.  Since GOP fundraising appeals presumably only go out to people who would potentially donate to a right wing campaign, I could see a certain segment of those people getting all riled up over us.  If that's true, then great!!!

And though this might not be the top target for the Democrats in 2008 even if Hagel doesn't run, the fact that the Democrats can remain competitive in a Senate race in a state as supposedly red as Nebraska is a real testament to the success of rebuilding state parties and Democratic institutions across the country.

While I'm sure this is in part a testament to our success rebuilding state parties, at the same time I have to think that the recent Democratic success recruiting candidates has just as much to do with the GOP's recent troubles as it does better management of the state Democratic parties (i.e. ambitious Democratic candidates see this as their best shot in years to actually win an election for the office they covet).  One real test of how much we've improved our state institutions will be how well we do recruiting quality red state candidates when (if?) the political climate becomes less toxic for the GOP.

You should have been going after the Laura Swarzes , liebermans and the Lanny Davises of the party after 2000, not the Nader types.

I am CONVINCED the party as it stands now would not be this progressive without the 2000 loss. Its too bad the party did not learn its lesson in 2004.

Pravin, I completely agree.  Nader's "success" in attracting votes in 2000 has little to do with anything Ralph brought to the table as a candidate and far more to do with the moribund state of the Democratic Party and it's rightward drift during the 1990s.  I think the Democratic Party should be strong and competent enough to win national elections even if there are 10 fringe lefty candidates in the general election field.  Now I voted for Gore in 2000, but it wasn't an enthusiastic vote--it was a vote against Bush, really.  The party's standard bearer should be a strong enough candidate to appeal to both base voters like myself and the middle.  The fact that Gore struggled with this is simply an indication of the Party's weakness and the progressive movement's electoral weakness and lack of clout within the party in 2000.

The only time third party candidates have impacted elections in the past 25 years is when one of the two major parties fails to adequately appeal to the coalition of voters who typically support them.  And I don't mean they only failed to appeal to their coalition during the campaign--they also failed to govern in a way that appealed to their coalitions, and who's going to believe the campaign rhetoric when your actions don't support it?

We saw it in 1992 (when Perot pulled away Republicans down on Bush Sr.'s tax increase), in 2000 (when Nader pulled away the disaffected parts of the Democratic base after 8 years of Clinton triangulation and a lackluster Gore campaign) and even in 2006 to some extent, where Libertarian candidates pulled in vote totals in excess of the Dem's margin of victory in MO-Sen and MT-Sen after the GOP abandoned Libertarians on Terri Schiavo, illegal wiretapping, etc.  

It took W' s disastrous presidency to remind the Democratic Party what it stands for and who it represents, which is really a shame.  Hopefully, we won't forget the lesson any time soon.

Matt, I don't necessarily buy the premise that the GOP machine is superior to ours.  At the very least, I don't think the evidence you cite proves GOP field superiority.  There are a number of explanations as to why we didn't win more of the races where GOP incumbents held on by razor thin margins--the GOP incumbents were more politically skilled, the district was simply too Republican for a Dem to win even in a wave year, the voting machines malfunctioned, etc.  There's probably a unique explanation for each district and perhaps in some districts stronger GOP field was the decisive factor.

All that said, it's still very important to discuss how we can improve our overall field/infrastructure/databases/volunteer networks.  I just haven't seen any real evidence that the framework for the discussion needs to be, "we need to catch up to the GOP..."  

I think one reason the conversation on blogs about field is so content-poor is the absence of independent/reliable/comprehensive data on field programs and the degree to which the absence of data limits useful analysis.  You can tell a lot about the health of your field program by looking at numbers like how many volunteers you've recruited, how many phone contacts you've made, how many door-to-door contacts you've made, etc. We have no idea what those #s really are, nor do we know how those numbers compare to past elections or how they compare to the GOP #s.  

I imagine it's hard to come by reliable and comprehensive data about field programs because:

1. Our field operation is made up of a variety of groups (the party committees, labor, MoveOn, etc.) so pulling together comprehensive data is inherently difficult.  

2. Any data about field that's made public is usually in the context of press releases ("we knocked on 2 million doors this weekend!") that are inherently designed to puff up the impact of the field program--I really question the extent to which data released in this context is reliable.  

This is why I never really believed all the huffing and puffing about the "superior" GOP machine.  Really, we have no quantifiable way to tell which machine is superior.  Election results alone are not reliable evidence of field superiority, since field is only one of a large # of factors that influence the outcome of elections (quality of candidates, fundraising, quality of media, etc.).  

thank god it looks like some of our Congressmen are finally mustering up the courage to do the hard but correct thing on Iraq funding

I can't think of a single good thing Congress has done since 2000--bi-partisan or otherwise.

If you're searching for any "good" or "popular" bi-partisan legislation from the past 15 years, you'll have to focus on the period from roughly 1990 until the 2000 election.  And I'm not sure there's much there, either.

I guess some of the budget balancing stuff Clinton and the GOP Congress did in the late 1990s was both good and popular.

Also, I believe Bush Sr. signed a decent bi-partisan strengthening of the Clean Air Act in 1990.

While I don't think this is "good," I suspect the welfare reform Clinton and the GOP Congress enacted in the 1990s is generally considered "popular."

favorite bourbon drink--the old fashioned

Chris, great post, I'm a fan of your work to create metrics that attempt to measure things like ideological cohesion and party loyalty.  It blows my mind that so-called journalists at major news outlets can get away with saying things like "the Dems aren't unified" or "conservative Dems carried the day for the party in the election" without doing even a cursory analysis of the accuracy of these claims.  I can't think of a single other business besides political journalism where you can make bogus claims that are easily picked apart by anybody who's even mildly capable of critical thinking; yet you don't get fired.

I find Hoyer an uninspiring choice, and while I deeply respect Murtha's activism on Iraq, the rest of his record leaves much to be desired.

John Lewis represents the some of the best of the Democratic caucus and would make a fine choice.  He strikes me as terrific messenger for the progressive vision, much better than Pelosi (who is obviously talented but somewhat charisma-challenged).

Bottom line is we need more hats in the ring and some better options besides Hoyer vs. Murtha.

Waxman would be great, but two CA  members (Pelosi and Waxman) wouldn't be the right strategic decision.