Centerblue.org

For far too long the Democratic Party had ceded wide swaths of the West and South to Republicans, forcing the party into a corner by relying on the coasts and the NorthEast. As the last six years have shown, this is not a workable strategy, and it is sensibly being abandoned.

People everywhere from coast to coast are ready for a new direction, and Democrats are doing battle on every battle front without fear.

Ohio has become a huge clusterfuck for Republicans, with the RNC pulling out all funding in the DeWine Senate race and effectively ceding the race to Sharrod Brown. Dems have a good chance of gaining up to four Congressional seats in this state alone.

In Wyoming, Republican Cubin still leads but has stumbled badly after she lost her composure and told her Libertarian opponent after a debate that she would slap his face if he weren’t in a wheelchair.

In Idaho, a state so red that Democrats are usually nothing more than sacrificial lambs, Democrat Larry Grant is running strong against Republican state rep. Bill Sali, forcing the RNC to spend $375,000 in Idaho’s District 1. Dick Cheney is also spending time here, as the Republican establishment is increasingly forced to play defense from coast to coast.
Right next door in Washington’s 5th and 8th Congressional Districts, Republican incumbents are running scared against strong Democratic challengers Peter Goldmark and Darcy Burner.

In Montana, another hardcore red state, Democrat Jon Tester leads in his Senate race against incumbent Conrad Burns, who has been burned on numerous occasions by his crass comments–including chewing out firefighters combating forest fires in Montana as “do-nothings.”

In New Hampshire, where Republican Charles Bass defeated Democratic challenger Paul Hodes by 20 points in 2004, now trails the same challenger by nine points.

Rural voters in general have tilted precipitously towards Democrats and away from Republicans, 52% to 39%. The Dems MUST target the rural vote like no tomorrow and not cede an inch of them to the GOP.

Democrats are out there in every state, in urban cities and rural villages, fighting mano a mano with brass knuckles for every vote against a GOP machine that continues to crumble. That is as it should be–the Democrats need to fight to be a national party again. If they win big in November they must never again forget the pain of being out of power so long, a pain mostly self-inflicted by a near-sighted “two coast” strategy that let Republicans ill-define them.

George Will’s column laments the increasing misfortune of Republicans in the Keystone State.

In the governor’s race, Democrat Ed Rendell hopes to defeat his Republican opponent Lynn Swann by exploiting what he considers to be the increasingly fragmented and incompatible nature of the Republican vote: the loyal base, the disappointed base that may not vote, and the moderates who are concluding there is no place for them in the GOP. This last group is disenchanted because of the GOP’s backwards positions on issues like stem cell research, creationism in schools, and gay rights.

Republican Senator Rick Santorum’s re-election campaign is also in serious trouble and he will probably lose his seat because of this same fracture in GOP politics. This erosion in support is part of a “sea change” in electoral politics that is seeing Democratic candidates successful in previously Republican strongholds.

The Democratic strategy in Pennsylvania is obviously a winning one and will hopefully spread outside the Commonwealth, especially with there already being 12 Democratic governors in “red” states.