Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Elect Democrats

As I've said a couple of times the subtle encouragements to donate will become less subtle. It's embarrassing how much time candidates spend in some dark dungeon on the phone begging for campaign contributions. Time spent doing that is time not spent out among the people doing press the flesh politics which at least to me seems to be a bit more desirable.

Right now there are 3 candidates on the Eschaton community list. Have another candidate you like? Go give money to them.

The first candidate is Lois Murphy. She's running against the awful Jim Gerlach here in Pennsylvania. In '04 she came close enough that some called the race for her, but Gerlach managed to win it by a whisker in the end.

The second is Patrick Murphy, no relation to Lois. He's an Iraq war vet, really nice guy. Also running in PA. He does have primary opponents, one of whom was a Republican until about 5 minutes ago. I don't know much about the other one who just entered the race.

The third is Louise Slaughter. She's an incumbent, and my preference is to steer money to challengers, but Slaughter is a great friend of the blogosphere and has been spending a lot of time fighting the good fight instead of raising money. For this she was rewarded with a threatened primary challenge, though this has yet to fully materialize. In any case, Slaughter's "our kind of Democrat" and we should support those who support us.

I'll add a few more candidates at some point, and please feel free to give to anyone you like. But do give. A candidate does or says something you like? Reward them with a few bucks. The Dems make you proud one day? Show them some love. The more money they get from the "little people" means less time asskissing big donors and sucking up to the Washington power establishment.