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All 435 House seats will be up. It's not a matter of just what seats are open. We have time for primaries and a long time before November of 2012. If we take advantage of the almost universal frustration with Congress, we should be able to recapture control of the House. The Senate's more problematic, since only a third of the seats there will be up for election. Still, the same thing applies.
I don't think we can go with conventional wisdom in 2012 and pass on seats that are questionable. I think we need to fight for every seat in the House and every seat that's up in the Senate. Incumbency isn't going to be a strong campaign plus in 2012. I think we should consider every seat to be open.
Blue Dogs? The teabaggers won those seats. I'll take a Blue Dog who votes with the Democratic Caucus every time over any teabagger. Yes, there will be Blue Dogs if we manage to retake control of the House. But, if populist liberals are the nominees in those districts, I think we can do better than that, at least in some districts.
I'm not an idealist when it comes to electing people to Congress. Each district and state is its own thing. Nothing we can do about that. It's just that what happened in 2010 fucked things up beyond my wildest nightmares. We can do something about that. What that something is is to work in your own district and state and let the rest of the districts and states deal with their own situations. House seats are local everywhere. Their all up for grabs at every election. But it's going to be the people who live in those districts who will know how far they can push the envelope. People from outside the district do not know, and there's plenty to do in everyone's own district, or in a nearby district.
For example, my Congressional district MN CD-4 is a solid district for its current representative, Betty McCollum. She's great. While I'll be talking her up, I'm going to spend a lot of energy in CD-6, where Michele Bachmann is from. Redistricting will make some changes there. A terrific candidate has a good chance, expecially if Bachmann chooses to do something else.
Local action. Focused action. Smart candidate choices, fine-tuned for each district. That's how we do it. We simply have to stop bickering among ourselves and do what can work in each district and state. This is not a short-term project. If we treat it as such and are too narrow in our willingness to support candidates, we're going to lose the long race. That I can guarantee.
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