It's July. The campaign events and polling data we blog-obsessed political junkies are all so raptly following are just shadow-puppet plays projected onto the one-tenth of an iceberg that is above the surface. (So, how's that for some metaphor mixing in a run-on sentence?)

Soon, the Olympics will start, and the backlight for the shadow puppet play will dim for a couple of weeks. Once they're over, however, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming-- breathless coverage of every shift within the margin of error in a tracking poll and ponderous pondering of the meaning of different results in different polls taken by different pollsters using different methodologies, different calling lists and different likely voter assumptions.

All good fun, but please keep in mind that, until September, it's all just mindless eye-candy. Barring some huge campaign-ending scandal, gaffe or catastrophe, the first polls that will mean a damn thing will be taken during the week after Labor Day. That's when the likely voter models will stop skewing "old" and start becoming representative of all the people who are actually likely voters.

What's actually important now is what's going on with the nine tenths of the iceberg we can't see. Opening field offices and hiring staff, organizing volunteers and raising money. The MSM doesn't perceive any of this stuff other than money raised by the presidential campaigns as being very important and, honestly, its too inside-basebally and boring for most reported blogs, other than the ones that specialize in that kind of stuff, to garner much attention.

But the truth is that this year, for a change, we are kicking the immortal crud out of the Republicans when it comes to this boring stuff and that boring stuff is setting the stage for a political earthquake in the fall.

Which brings me to my plea for help for Roy Carter. Coach Carter is running against Rep. Virginia Foxx here in North Carolina's Fifth District.

Most of you have probably never heard of Foxx before because, by and large, she stays out of the national limelight and this District is supposedly so gerrymandered that she's deemed unshakable by the party bigwigs.

Foxx succeeded the comparatively benign Richard Burr when he took over John Edwards' Senate seat in '04. The Fifth District being what it is, the whole '04 race essentially boiled down to a runoff in the Republican primary between her and Vernon Robinson--who some of you may have heard of. Essentially, it was a race to see which of them was the worst, knuckle-dragging, rabble-rousing, hatemongering, acid-spewing, xenophobic, homophobic, Cristofascistic, Bushloving, warmongering monster. Foxx won that competition hands down, which was no mean feat against Vernon Robinson.

Since then, she has proven it wasn't just campaign rhetoric. She has distinguished herself by her 100% support for each and every little thing George W. Bush wants, other than immigration reform, for being one of the worst abusers of the Congressional franking privilege, and for amassing a ridiculously bloated warchest of contributions from the vilest people and PACs in the nation, which she uses to support and buy influence with other Republican members of Congress. She is a steadfast supporter of endless war in Iraq. She was one of eleven to vote against Katrina relief in September, '05 and one of 31 to vote against extension of the Voting Rights Act. She never saw an pro-environment bill she was for or an environmental atrocity she would not actively advocate. In April, 2006, she conducted a "field hearing" here in the district called Gangs, Fraud and Sexual Predators: Struggling with the Consequences of Illegal Immigration. No,really, that's what she called it.

Yeah, our Ginny's a real peach. And, worse, she's quiet and unsplashy and she's accumulating favors, all of which makes her twice as dangerous as some of the cartoonish buffoons who are being targeted by the DCCC and the DNC.

Roy Carter won the Democratic primary and frankly, any other year it would be easy to write him off as the third in a series of sacrifical lambs the local party has tossed into the ring with her. The DSCC is pouring money and resources into Kay Hagen's senate race against Libby Dole, but the DCCC has given Carter nothing but a promise--raise a quarter of a million on your own and we'll come in to help you. They gave him access to to their contacts database and a pat on the head, and Roy picked up the phone and started calling people himself. Which led him to me, which leads me to you.

Take a look at Roy's site. Note his willingness to identify himself with Obama, right down to using the Obama website's color scheme--that's a small act of courage in itself here. He's a career educator, and a former football coach, who's on the right side on every issue. The guy's not going to be another Blue Dog.

Folks, I think the party is wrong this time. The stars are aligning for a historic realignment landslide this year and it presents us with an opportunity to jettison Foxx that we may not see again in her lifetime. The mood in this district is as negative about Republicans as I've ever seen it. People here don't like the war anymore, they're scared and frightened by the economy and McCain's candidacy has robbed the Republicans of the ability to fearmonger on the immigration issue.

Coach Carter is just the kind of man we need to ride that wave and wash her out of Congress. He looks and talks like the native he is, and I think he's got the ability to connect with the voters in this district if he gets the resources he needs to run a competitive race against Foxx.

So those of you who can, please, help. Please help save me, my district, my state and the entire country from another two years of Virginia Foxx. Give what you can to Coach Carter's campaign and help him convince the DCCC to invest in this race. Its not a hard call. He's a good man standing up against long odds and his opponent is the concentrated essence of everything that's wrong with the Republican party in one hateful little ball of vitriol-soaked ugliness.