I don't know if any of you remember a guy back in 2004 named "Tom Daschle." He was a good guy.  Our majority leader in the Senate.

Then came November.   The party's leader in the Senate was gone, replaced with Harry Reid.  Ugh.   It was bad enough that Bush won reelection, but the Republicans also routed one of our best and brightest from gaining reelection.  It was a second defeat in the same night.

Then came 2006.  We remember that year.  Pretty good year.  We made some progress.  Not enough, but we started to make some.  We put ourselves on the right path.  The war path!   And now comes 2008.  Nominations still underway!  And real fights, too, Ones we can all agree on.  Fights in Illinois, between the Republicans and the Democrats.   On their turf, no less.  Yet times are changing, people are thirsty for something different.  They want the GOP to know that they are failures.

In a district that was all but designed for Republican rule, that was held by the Republican Speaker of the House for 21 years, we fought a battle.  You see, this Republican saw that things were going south so he decided to retire.  So we donated to our guy Foster, we volunteered for the party, we phone banked and we knocked on doors to change that district.  It's a district that we had no business fighting so hard for.

We took no voter for granted and we took no prisoners.  As a result, our efforts have paid off.  We have turned a red district into a blue district.  The seat of Dennis Hastert is now in the hands of the Democratic Party.  Sssooo, let me say this.  Thank you, Representative Bill Foster!"

That's one down, and many more to go!