Dan Maffei is within the margin of error to defeat 18 year incumbent Jim Walsh.  

Right now, Jim Walsh is running very scared.  He's also making some stupid assertions that he is independent from President Bush.  This is a Congressman that votes with President Bush 90% of the time!!!  

Please - if you can - donate to Dan - he often gets overshawdowed because of the Arcuri campaign.

http://www.maffeiforcongress.com/

Bush just out and out lies.  Social Security will not go broke by 2042.  First off, the trustees of the system say that in 2052, they will not be able to pay out 100% of the benefits.  Second, these are just projections based on economic growth of 1.5% (average economic growth is much higher).  Thirdly, Bush projects higher economic growth for his budget projections on the deficit, but not on his Social Security proposals.

And the media doesn't call him on it?  Just these stupid, inane stories of people in their 30s saying "I'm not going to get anything from Social Security."  I'm thirty-five - by the time that the payments go from 100% to 80% in 2052 (if that's the case of nothing being done and only 1.5% economic growth) I will be 82 - and may be dead by then anyway.  

I wish there was an open and honest debate on Social Security - but I doubt it.

There is a new website on where to take the Labore movement.  Check it out!  UniteToWin.org.

If the Democratic Party is going to survive, it can only be done with a powerful labor movement.

I worry and yet I'm excited.

I read stories about the incredible GOTV efforts in the battleground states.  Efforts that started over a year ago.  And I think that the election has to be won.  How can we be denied?

Then I see stories about Dr. Dan in Kentucky and Hoeffel in PA and I think "maybe everyone is missing something out there).

And yet, from experience, I just have this feeling in my gut that we can throw everything including the kitchen sink at BC'04 and it still doesn't matter.

What does everyone think?  Do you think that we will win big, lose big, or it will all be a big wash?

Even if John Kerry wins, we will still have the problem of working class people still identifying with issues and policies that are against their economic self interest.  

Does a Kerry victory mean that the Democratic Party goes back to sleep and just come out at election time?  Is there a way to create something new?  Should we burn down this village in order to save it (alot like the Goldwater people did with the GOP in the 60s and 70s)?

Right now, I am reading the book "What's the Matter with Kansas" by Tom Franks.  An excellent book about how working class people are voting against their economic self interest in favor of cultural issues.

The right has been effective at getting people to concentrate on those issues (I call them the three G's - God, Gays and Guns) and not the three E's (Economics, Equality and the Environment).

What the genuis of the right is that they have no plan to win the culture war, and they don't really want to win that war.  It's better to keep people in a constant state of "us vs. them" so that people concentrate on those issues, and not the fact that their job went overseas.

Is it possible to get Americans more class conscious?  I was told by a friend that he saw a poll where 60% of Americans expect to be a millionaire.  It's ridiculous!  They identify with people who have no regard for them as a class.  

Basically my question is how do you seize a macroecnomic issue, and change the cultural dialouge of a nation?