His opponent is the one the DC Dems are funding. Novick is holding his own against much bigger money from the DSCC. He's much more likely to be his own man and is the far better choice for the netroots to support. I asked Joe Trippi, yesterday, how the DNC and Democratic leadership will be different with Obama and his bottom up campaign and leadership model in charge. He repied that John Tester won, in spite of his opponent being backed by the DSCC. Tester won because of the netroots. Backing the big money, old guard, top-down politician who owes everyone in the state-- or the independent, not afraid to speak up about issues with Dems-- after all, they're not exactly perfect-- he's the one for me.

the Dems in congress threw the activists, the progressives a bone-- no more funding of the war, impeachment hearings, reinstating habeas corpus, investigating some more of those Bush appointees-- you know, stuff that would show they were taking us seriously. Then, the money would pour in.

Too bad Pelosi and Reid are such dismal leaders. If they had the guts to cut the funding for the war back in the spring, the DNC's coffers would be overflowing.

It's not surprising the Dems have less. They are blowing the majority they have in congress. Every person I know has decided to tell callers seeking funds for the DNC to pound sand until they either bring the troops home or start impeachment proceedings on Cheney.

The sad thing is, right now, local dems running in races for municipal, township and county positions could really use the help of the DNC. Firmly thrashing local republicans will discourage the strongest candidates from even bothering to run. That would make it a lot easier to win next year, if the right was stuck with weaker candidates.

Ewww. You're digging yourself in deeper Matt.

I know Michael Moore wrote a book about stupid white men, but he spent a whole book spelling out who they are. You're painting with too broad a brush.

What about John Edwards, Obama, Boxer, Feingold, Podesta, Kucinich, Gore, Krugman, Olbermann, Jon Stewart...

Of course, there are Gen Xers who are graduates of Regent University, like Bush's Monica-- the one who didn't do blowjobs. And there's Tucker Carlson-- talk about assholes. How about Anne Coulter? But that does not indict the whole generation.

Frankly, the people who are really in power are the generation just before the boomers. I always think of them as exemplified by the "greasers" who were teens in the late forties and early to mid fifties-- the types-- as portrayed by John Travolta in GREASE.

Look at the owners of the media-- they are almost all over 65.

No doubt, I am disappointed by the approximately 55% of boomers who lean right. But the numbers are about the same for all adults over 25. Then, the people over 70 tend to start leaning more left. They remember when the consitution was something you didn't mess with.

I think you made a mistake, need to re-evaluate your statements and make an apology.

You want to criticize someone based on politics, statements, opinions or actions, fine. But people can't take responsibility for their age. It's bigotry to say what you said. You do too much good work to hurt your reputation with a remark like this.

Also, if there were a way to correlate age and contributions, I bet you'd find the boomers contribute the most to the dems and the left.

Now that IS a function of age. People over 40 tend to have higher incomes and more savings to draw from.  

I don't get it, ObamaEdwards2008, how you can not see that painting a whole generation because of a handful of assholes is totally inappropriate, bigoted and biased.

Check out OpEdNEws.com. A majority of the readers are boomers there and you will find they are probably left of MYDD.com people. How do you handle that? Call boomers schizos?

Matt is a great guy doing great work. But he blew it on this one and should apologize. I started reading mydd.com regularly after Joe Trippi told me it was his favorite blog. Joe's a boomer too. So's Obama, for that matter. So's Edwards. Are you starting to feel a little cognitive dissonance in your attitude towards boomers?

What your problem Matt? You complain about Imus and his problems with treating people of one kind wrong and then you get ugly with boomers. Nasty!!  

So you think it's bad to call blacks names, but insulting an age group is just peachy?

I find some inconsistency and perhaps hypocrisy here.

Imus is older than boomer age, BTW.

Also, the polling I've seen shows that 25-40 somethings vote about the same as boomers.

joe lieberman. Didn't Chris Bowers' list of bluedog saboteurs include Sestak?

At least Patrick Murphy, who's also a bluedog, isn't going along on this bluedog issue. But the best bet, if you're looking at freshman exmilitary might be Chris Carney, who comes from a red PA district.

Just like he did with that amazing dynamo Bob Casey. You know, the PA senator who barely shows his head, ever. The democratic machine in PA is pathetic. Progressives are making some inroads, but the dems who vote in the endorsement primaries are still mostly past 70. There's a lot of work to do or we'll have another antichoice candidate running against specter.

An answer to one question about Obama. He had some loyalty to Lieberman because Lieberman was assigned as his mentor when he was a freshman senator.

every member of congress gets a mentor. It would be useful to identify the mentors for every member of congress.

THe only way to take the money out of campaigns is to take the biggest cost out-- ad buys on media. The  way to do that is to require that all media give equal time or space, free, to qualified candidates. Will any of these candidates stand up for this?

The Zogby poll we commissioned, over at OpEdNEws.com, found that a majority of voters support requiring mainstream media to GIVE free ad time to qualified candidates. The biggest cost of campaigning is the cost of buying ad time. Take it out and I bet that million bucks drops precipitously. Why shouldn't the companies that have been getting the airwaves for free give a little back in the form of campaign ads?  And already, the public demand is there.

We also found that the majority of the public-- over 60%-- want to take the money factor out of elections. People ARE ready for this, just not the operators who parasitize the system, like McConnell.

I find myself feeling resentful to how you frame the times and people.

One thing that was vastly different was there was not internet to enable communication, bottom up grassroots coordination, democratic decision making. Back then, like some commenters have observed, it was a lot about leaders, because, the technology of the times dictated, it was about who got hold of the microphone.

Since there was no internet, another primary means of communication was through music and musicians. That's why Woodstock was important. It wasn't just a musical event. It was a convening of the counterculture.

The counterculture was a reaction to the old rules-- the dessicated, stale customs, ceremonies, ways of doing things that needed to be challenged and questioned. You can wear jeans to work today because that was one cultural taboo that was challenged and broken. Premarital sex is not something that bans a young women to be sent off with out of state relatives because of the counterculture and the confrontation it produced with the "old" ways.

When it comes to politics, the people of the sixties really blew it. Most of those who protested against Viet Nam-- on campus or in DC-- didn't follow through. The war ended, Disco, Donna Summer and the Bee Gees replaced love-ins, Dylan, Hendrix and Crosby Stills and Richie Havens. And now, too many of those boomers are among the remaining idiots who still support Bush.

Of course, there were always plenty of rednecks, even in the sixties, and all those shirt pocket protector wearing business majors who were jealous of the longhairs who seemed to be having all that fun with sex and drugs. They went on to become yuppies.

But there are still plenty of people in their fifties and sixties who are now tapping the power of the internet and engaging in the new progressive politics. There are some not quite old, but older dogs that are learning the new tricks.

Bottom line-- don't be too quick to write off what we did in the sixties. Your lives would be far more restricted, with many less freedoms if we hadn't done our cultural revolution. Now, let's figure out how we can do all we can to take America to a new level of progressive awareness and policy.