Harold Ford announces for US Senate (yawn)

In a move that surprised absolutely no one, our own Blue Dog congressman has told a group of 200 Democrats in Chattanooga. There has been a lively discussion at MyDD (My Due Diligence) regarding his chances for the office, and most responses have been positive and encouraging.

Not ALL of them, however, as this poster contends:

Ford came to one of the first public fora sponsored by the Music Row Democrats and spoke. During that speech he tried to rationalize his vote for the Iraq War: "We were wrong. We thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but unfortunately we were wrong."

(The DLC-ers weren't wrong. They ALL knew better. They just voted for the war for a whole bunch of OTHER reasons.)

In any event, a few minutes later in that same speech Ford said, "I believe that we are safer with Saddam gone."

I wanted to ask the SOB how we could be safer with Saddam gone, when the evidence showed that a) He had no WMD and b) he had no Al Queda ties.

The point is, he completely contradicted himself logically in his speech by mouting nothing but conventional, DLC-talking point, platitudes that made no logical sense.

During that same speech last spring, Ford had the nerve to caution moderation in Democrats' criticism of Bush (the typical DLC approach.) He even went on to shame Democrats who were too angry with Bush, saying that anger wasn't going to get the Democratic Party anywhere.

Soon after, someone in the audience got up, and right to his face said, "I don't know about you, Congressman Ford, but I AM ANGRY. And I'm not going to apologize for it. After seeing what Bush has done over the last three years, how can anyone help but be angry?"

The 200 + people in attendance, at that point, gave that woman a rousing ovation, and Ford, momentarily was left looking like the fool he is.

Yes, I'm Back! So How Did We Lose Ohio?

Steve Rosenthal of America Coming Together, who was responsible for our ground efforts in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other key states, thinks he has an answer in this Washington Post article.

This dispels many of the myths about the 2004 election, like that Rove had a terrific ground game:

Fourth myth: Republicans ran a superior, volunteer-driven mobilization effort.

Reality: When we asked new voters in rural and exurban areas who contacted them during this campaign, we learned that they were just as likely to hear from the Kerry campaign and its allies as from the Bush side. (In contrast, regular voters reported more contact from the GOP.)

Then perhaps it was conservative religious groups or pro-life organizations or the National Rifle Association that reached these new Republican voters? No, according to our post-election polling; only 20 percent of exurban and rural Ohio voters reported that they had been contacted by someone from their church, and only slightly higher percentages were contacted by conservative organizations. In contrast, these same voters in the least unionized regions of Ohio were more likely to have been contacted by a labor union.