John Laesch is truly taking the fight to Denny Hastert — and has pulled within 10 points in the latest polling.  The above YouTube is John's latest ad, and as you'll see, it uses Tom Reynolds' (R-NY) own words to point out Hastert's failures.  The production values aren't top of the line (and with Laesch's budget and the lack of DCCC money, how could they be?  Thanks, Rahm, heckuva job.), but it's very effective nonetheless. 

And it's important to keep this on the air with Hastert now barely polling around 50%. 

We've been supporting John Laesch all along (since way back in July!) because he is a great candidate and it was the right thing to do – for his district and for America.   But Laesch finds himself in a much better position now than he was several weeks ago when we had him over for his first Blue America chat.  If you have any change to spare, the Laesch campaign could make some very good use of it this week, so please consider visiting our Blue America page and helping them out.

But John isn't the only Blue America candidate who is kicking butt at the moment.  I highlighted some new polling results yesterday for rwcole in the comments, but I wanted to be sure that everyone had a chance to see them.  The full results report is at MyDD, but I wanted to highlight a few Blue America candidates for everyone:

  • PA-07: Sestak (D) 52%–44% Weldon (R)
  • NY-24: Arcuri (D) 53%–42% Meier (R) 
  • NC-08: Kissel (D) 51%–44% Hayes (R)
  • PA-06: Murphy (D) 52%–46% Gerlach (R)
  • OH-02: Wulsin (D) 48%–45% Schmidt (R)
  • NY-03: King (R) 48%–46% Mejias (D)
  • CA-04: Doolittle (R) 52%–44% Brown (D)
  • IL-14: Hastert (R) 52%–42% Leasch (D)

    • And that's not the whole House poll — just a few that I've pulled out to highlight. 

    Look, the fact is that a lot of these candidates were given little to no chance, and even less funding from the Beltway crowd and the DCCC.  The netroots stepped in to help them out — Howie could tell you so much more about this, and likely will, but I cannot tell you how much it pisses me off that we are not nurturing good Democratic candidates everywhere. 

    Of course there are limited resources, and of course you have to pick and choose where best to apply them — but when you look at Vic Wulsin, for example, and what a fantastic campaign she is running against Mean Jean Schmidt — and how much it meant for her to have had Paul Hackett run the last time around, a real, hard-fought, gutsy campaign, that truly softened up Schmidt's numbers for this challenge…you begin to see the true wisdom behind the fifty state strategy. 

    I highlight this not just because I would LUV to see Mean Jean defeated in the worst possible way, but also because this has been a truly good campaign — and Paul Hackett has really stepped up to the plate here and worked for Wulsin as hard as if he were running himself this time around.  And he ought to be thanked profusely for it every time you see him.

    We cannot win where we do not challenge — and we will never win every contest the first go around.  But Vic Wulsin pulling ahead by 3 points at the moment in one of the reddest districts in Ohio is an enormous victory for the Democratic party in Ohio and nationwide, and it should serve as a lesson that when you support great candidates, you get much better results.

    It's not just the House looking up, though, it's also the Senate.  Chris Bowers at MyDD and Bob Geiger have some great analysis on the latest trends.  At the moment, things are looking a lot closer for Democrats than we thought would be possible only a month ago.

    But here's the catch — every single one of these numbers is dependent on us turning out the vote.  Without a good ground game and getting our voters to the polls and casting ballots, none of this means squat.

    I stopped by my local Democratic party headquarters yesterday and signed up to do some calls for GOTV efforts here on Sunday evening.  And I'll likely be doing even more as time moves forward.  They had my number and were supposed to have called to let me know when phonebanking got going, but I hadn't heard from them, so I made the extra effort to track them down and volunteer in person.  Our local Democratic apparatus isn't incredibly well organized all the time, but this is important stuff, and I made sure to get involved because…well, dammit, I have had enough.

    Please take some time today, tomorrow, this weekend…whenever…to track down a local candidate, a progressive organization, your local Democratic party leadership, whomever, and volunteer to do something to help get the vote out.  Offer to drop off absentee ballot applications at local nursing homes — that can make a huge difference for folks who cannot always make it to the polls on their own steam.  Offer to be a ride to the polls for voters who need one.  Make some calls.  Canvass some neighborhoods.  Talk to friends at work about all of you going together to vote.  Use early voting — which around here uses paper ballots, which is a plus in my book — and bring along some friends to also vote when you do.

    Whatever it takes, let's all do the work from now until November 7th.  Because we have all had more than enough.  It's time for a change for the better for America.