Get ready for a big red blotch right in the middle of the country.

proud2BlibKansan

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Sun Oct-17-10 03:50 PM
Original message

Get ready for a big red blotch right in the middle of the country.

First of all, I will be voting and I am voting for every Democrat on my ballot. Let there be no doubt about that.

But I also expect nearly every one of those Democrats to lose. And I am not surprised.

I live in red state hell. Squared. On steroids. We haven't had a Democratic US Senator since the 1930s and I don't remember the last time our state house was in Democratic hands. This state is a republican stronghold. And I can't remember a time in my life when the Democrats here weren't fighting as hard as they can with what limited resources they have to turn the state blue. It's a constant never ending battle.

Until the early 90s (92? Too lazy to look it up) the district including Wichita was solid Democratic. Then the anti-choicers moved to Wichita to put Dr Tiller out of business and took over that district. It's been solid red ever since. And they did finally put Tiller out of business by murdering him last year.

My district - the 3rd - has a blue dog as a Congressman. Good man. He's been in office 12 years and is retiring. It will be a miracle if his wife who is now running for his seat wins her election. So we will likely be a red district here in a few weeks.

Our governor, a Democrat, is retiring from politics and will likely be replaced by Sam Brownback. We have a wonderful Democratic candidate but he doesn't have the funds to beat Sam. A local paper recently gave Brownback a 98.9% chance of winning his election.

In Kansas we also have this family by the name of Koch. Thank the goddess for Rachel Maddow who is helping to make this evil wealthy family a household name. And I suppose their stupidity in funding the phony grassroots tea party has also help expose them nationally. But point is, the Kochs control the state. They fund the GOP candidates who almost always win their elections. We have a smattering of Dems here but none of them have the financial backing the Kochs give their right wing candidates.

So the under funded Democrats continue to lose.

And because we are such a red state, we are largely ignored by every national Democratic organization. Our candidates only rarely get DSCC or DCCC support. I can't remember the DNC ever putting any serious money here. We did get an office during Dean's 50 state strategy campaign but that only stayed open about 6 months. Again, no money.

We have great candidates running in each congressional district and a wonderful governor and US Senate candidate. But every single one is underfunded. When you can only depend on local money and your opponent is funded by the Kochs, you are operating on a tight budget.

In Missouri, only a few miles from where I live, Roy Blunt is stomping Robin Carnahan. So the Democrats have decided to scale back (in other words, withdraw funding) from Carnahan's race. In Blunt's congressional district, a republican who was on Governor Matt Blunt's staff is registered as a Democrat running for that seat. So we basically have a republican running against a republican. Ike Skelton is threatened in his district. (Something I thought I would never see.) So MO can very likely end up with blue in KC, blue in St Louis and red everywhere else.

Until the Democrats get serious on a national level and work at winning elections all across the country, we will continue to have red state hells like the one here in Kansas and the almost red state hell being created in Missouri.

They have the Kochs. We have ________ ???

Give me a reason to be hopeful.