Well, she didn't quite say it that way.

She said that even losing when for a good cause with a lot of good organizational energy is important for building up long term party strength, or specific issues strength. Every time a district goes uncontested, a fairy loses its wings. The 50-state plan is a recipe for failure - this time. It means accepting losses, but trying to make those losses close so that next time, there's more funding, better people on the campaign, more name recognition, and in general an improved local party structure.

More activism came out of Dean's failed campaign than Kerry's close run - thinking out of the box. Netroots fielded a lot of doomed candidates in 2006 and lost a few, won a few - and made the Republicans dig deep to fight them off. Some of those candidates are disappointing Blue Doggers, but that's part of the ecosystem - better to have a bigger disappointing tent than a smaller irrelevant minority. For now.

So from Dean's tiny group of activists, extrapolate to Hillary's 18 million and Obama's 18+ million and contemplate what all that ground action up into June meant. People. Money. Passion. Enthusiasm. But at a local level. The 2 remaining candidates are irritating us to death or boring us silly? Tell me who you got local that's exciting you - think about Battle of the Bands. This is TPM Election Central, not TPM Boring Fucking Presidential Campaign Central.

As Quinn sent me, get up out of your chairs and ROCK! As if your very life depends on it. Or someone's. If you don't, I swear I'll start pulling wings off Tink. That'll show you. So blog or the fairy gets it. That's what it's come to. Violence begets good netizens. Heinlein would be pleased.

Okay, poor comedians and pundits are having trouble cutting through the laff track - now considered the Mach Speed Barrier of Comedy Center (you'd think making a bazillion dollars a year would make everyone else seem funny, but you'd be wrong). For some reason people don't see Obama as humorous or laughable or have created a Humor Free Zone around him just like Scotty had in Star Trek. It's our job to make him more human before he's transported by a tractor beam back to some other planet and we end up with John Curmudgeonly Turtle McCain as our Constable-in-Chief for 8 unbearable years.

So here were my recycled offerings from an earlier post - see what you can do to pile on. If they can't laugh with us, they'll laugh at us, and that situation only brings on Republicans.
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What does Obama do for fun? He gets his suits dry-cleaned. Originally his book was called "Dreams of My Tailor".

Why's Michelle so pissed? She wants to get past paying off Hillary's debt so they can focus on her student loans.

Want to see my impression of Barack dancing? (Sticks out finger, juts out jaw). Barack having sex? (Sticks out finger, juts out jaw).

How many Obamas does it take to change a lightbulb? "When I'm elected President, there won't be lightbulbs as usual..."

Obama returned to Iowa this week, impressing farmers with his call for aragula ethanol subsidies.

The other night Barack stepped out to relax, but couldn't find a stadium open anywhere.

Why doesn't Obama take his kids out on the campaign trail? They started answering "Yes we can" with "What'll you pay us?"

A well-known ad agency was disappointed this week to have Barack Obama turn down their "Audi of Hope" promotion.

Today McCain tried ridiculing Obama by recalling his time in the Hanoi Hilton. Obama cooly rebuffed him, recalling his time in the Jakarta Motel 6.

Having embraced him earlier, leading Irish Catholics have begun to doubt Obama's claims of being Christian, noting his lack of drinking and cursing and excessive time spent in church.

Actually only 110 days till the election, but the reason that Pasolini 120 number got in my head (aside from a natural penchant for fetish and S&M) was something I caught at Politico - that pesky delegate count. Only 120 delegates need to cross over to change the nominee.

Now why would I bring that up? Well, for one, you're boring me silly. I remember John Lennon giving back his B.O.E. because Cold Turkey was falling in the polls, so this isn't the first case of being excessively petty. And God has this place become soulless and without energy over the summer. Like what's-her-name sang, "Bloggers just wanna have fun". (Imagine we'd thrown our weight behind Cyndi Lauper instead of Madonna, we'd have been spared that awful version of American Pie and Guy Ritchie to boot). So wake up, get interesting, or I swear by Baal this is going to turn nasty.

Second, there's this, a graphic showing how far the judicial branch is slanted towards Republicans. This is repeatedly thrown out as a reason why Clinton supporters should lay down arms and kumbaya our way to victory. But that sword cuts both ways - if the kumbaya candidate abandons kumbaya positions, and worse, looks like he's on his way to defeat, reason says that kumbayaers should do what's reasonable, and save the union at whatever cost (that's what Lincoln did, after all, and I dare anyone to go mano-a-mano with him). So if the post-political candidate of a generation isn't up to the job, well by-Donovan by-Blixa let's get another one in there.

Third, there's this, Sean Oxendine via Matt Stoller/OpenLeft explaining when Obama's campaign releases fund-raising numbers based on good or bad. Let's look at those numbers in the good ol' pre-blame Hillary days:

Month  Amount      Announce
Jan      $32 mil        Feb 4
Feb     $54 mil        Mar 6
Mar     $40+ mil     Apr 3
Apr      $31 mil       May 20
May     $22 mil       Jun 20 (Friday, bury news day)
Jun      $???            late July

Back in February, Obama was raising almost $2 million a day, enough to pay off Hillary's non-loan debt in 5 days or so. But a month after Hillary started touring with him, that topic remains a thorn in everyone's sides and we've yet to see what kind of fundraising bump clinching the nomination gave him - not much if you buy Oxendine's reasoning, and with not much polling bump and a rather dismal month of campaign news, I can't imagine it being any other way. Stoller notes the tendency of Obama partisans to blame progressives, but it simply smacks of brand fatigue and mounting acceptance of reality to me. By the way, one of Netroots' "Better Democrats" just got blown out by over 50 points. 76.3% to 23.7%. Wow. That's huge. Of course her biggest mistake was not running a modern campaign, something Obama can't be accused of. But just because you think your candidate's the Best. Candidate. Evah. don't make it so. Every day there's some report about Obama's campaign not coordinating well with Congress or the DLC, making small PACs angry by pushing them to the side, or irritating his base with contrary positions on FISA, abortion, Iraq, faith based initiatives, etc. That's not the pre-convention momentum needed, and by now he's starting to look like Pandora with only hope left in his bag of tricks. Imagine he were running against a Republican people could rally around.

So don't just sit there, call your superdelegate, blast me as an asshole and raving lunatic, discuss Pasolini till you get a brain seizures, click Recommend a million times like a lab rat testing ephedrine, and most of all, WAKE UP!!!

(The only sound of crickets I want to hear is from our beloved Cricket - chirp chirp, chirp chirp)

First, a tribute to Dennis Hartley for his continually interesting film reviews over at Digbys Blog, as well as a tribute to a new film on Hunter S. Thompson, as well as a tribute to HST himself both for his life and times and his ability to save the career of whoever it is that wrote Doonesbury (and probably revive John Denver's career as well), and his ability to go out with a bang, and a tribute to the surprises that always await going over HST's work, such as Hartley's noting how he helped spring Jimmy Carter on us (I'd forgotten reading that Law Day speech, which really was impressive - of course I've never forgotten Thompson's diagnosis of the Edmund Muskie campaign breakdown, blaming it on a bad prescription - who knew? I saw the same phenomenon with other professionals later, but he was savvy to spot the trend so early, as well as his breakthrough interview with Nixon in the backseat of a limousine, seemingly condemned to talking only football, when "that Miami boy" was such a monumental insight/piece of additional information for the Nixon psyche and simply a sign of the times. Back then football was pure ether).

Anyway, my favorite HST book was The Great Shark Hunt, perhaps in my eyes deserving as one of the basic companion guides to modern journalism/politics, if that field hadn't been stunted into "how to whore yourself to a boss/public who only need 500-2000 words in a completely unsubstantial but memorably smooth glitzy self-debasing form to complement an ad-buy by 4pm"). The properly disrespectful version of "All the President's Men".

Oh yeah, and while not a huge fan of Bill Murray's take in "Where The Buffalo Roam", it certainly wasn't execrable like Johnny Depp's version (kinda like Johnny ruined Willy Wonka - what happened to Gilbert Grape, Ed Wood, Cry-Baby and Arizona Dreaming?).

So the Green Party nominates Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente to head its Pres/VP ticket. For some Progressives this must be awfully attractive - a heavily involved black/Hispanic/feminist/womanist duo solidly connected with activism and issues of race and gender and opposing the Iraq War and the military. On the other hand, thoroughly off the map of centrist acceptability (there will be very little Jewish support thanks to McKinney's past, and her hitting an officer on Capitol Hill being her main claim to fame doesn't bode well either), and at first glance it's hard to see what the two specifically bring as *Green* credentials.

So I'm curious what people think of as their effect in November, along with Bob Barr as Libertarian. Will disaffected Democrats be drawn to them? (Not that a former Republican now-ACLU acolyte is an obvious choice, but then Hagel is touring with Obama). Will they go down in the 0.001% category as relatively meaningless and a fringe attraction and side-show? You talk, Desi listens.