It's been almost a year since Election Day 2008, but some of our '08 champs could still use a little help.  Just sayin'.

As of September 30, 2009:

I'm not saying there aren't plenty of 2010 candidates that need our help.  (There are!  Please help!)  I'm just saying that helping our previous progressive winners to close their books and retire their debts could encourage other Democrats currently running to follow in more progressive footsteps, knowing we have their backs.

I'll leave you with a few reasons to be very, very proud of Senator Al Franken's first months as a U.S. Senator (and very, very motivated to help retire his campaign debt):

And a dash of Senator Merkley for good measure:

Consider this an open thread.

The man who beat non-Democrat Joe Lieberman in the 2006 Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut urges you to stand with the man who will beat non-Democrat Arlen Specter in the 2010 Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania.

Also, courtesy of The REAL Arlen Specter:

In his 45 years as a Republican, Arlen Specter cast thousands of votes for his party and against Democratic principles. In the last eight years, he voted more than 2,000 times with the Bush Republicans.  So when he claimed at Netroots Nation, "I'll stand behind my votes one by one," it makes one wonder, "Really, Arlen?"

It's hard to imagine any Democrat would stand behind voting for Bush's tax cuts for the richest of the rich or for Sarah Palin to be Vice-President of the United States, but the Real Arlen Specter is proud of his Republican credentials. ...

From the War in Iraq to the economic policies that created this savage recession, many of our current problems can be ascribed to one man: George W. Bush, who Specter voted for in 2000.  Given the chance to correct that vote and help put John Kerry in the White House, what did the Real Arlen Specter do?  Co-Chair Bush-Cheney '04 in Pennsylvania and vote for him a second time.

Now you can chose which one of these actions by the long-time Republican Senator is most egregious. Vote in our poll on this page and check back to see which vote was the worst of the worst. We will call on Arlen to stand behind the winner.

On the web:
-Joe Sestak, Democrat for Senate
-The REAL Arlen Specter
-Contribute to Joe Sestak via the Expand the Map! ActBlue page

For daily news and analysis on the U.S. Senate races around the country, regularly read Senate Guru.

Want to know something that scares me?  The phrase "Senator Roy Blunt."  Does that phrase scare you, too?  If it does, please consider a contribution to Missouri Secretary of State and 2010 Senate candidate Robin Carnahan via the Expand the Map! ActBlue page.

The third fundraising quarter of 2009 ends tomorrow.  Democrats running for Senate need to make as big a fundraising splash as possible in the third quarter to help refute the growing conventional wisdom among the traditional media pundits that 2010 could be a Republican year.  And Missouri will be a high-profile bellwether.

Remember, the fundraising quarter ends tomorrow, so please contribute to our Democratic candidates for Senate via the Expand the Map! ActBlue page today if you can.

Consider this an open thread.

Conservative columnist George Will thinks that conservative Republican former state House Speaker Marco Rubio will pull off an upset and defeat Charlie Crist in the 2010 GOP Senate primary:

In January 2011, one Floridian will leave for the U.S. Senate. He is unlikely to be a former governor at odds with his party's nominating electorate, or the probable Democratic nominee, Kendrick Meek, a hyper-liberal congressman. Rubio intends to prove that "in the most important swing state, you can run successfully as a principled conservative." He probably will.

If the straw polls taken around the state by Republican County Committees are any indication, Rubio will indeed defeat Crist.  In fact, since my last round-up of FL-GOP straw polls, which included the following rundown:

Pasco County: Rubio wins, 73-9
Lee County: Rubio wins, "7-to-1 margin" [60-9]
Highlands County: Rubio wins, 75-1
Bay County: Rubio wins, 23-2
Volusia County: GOP Committee censures Crist
Palm Beach County: GOP Committee almost censures Crist as motion fails on a 65-65 tie, still a stinging rebuke
Broward County: GOP Committee attempts a straw poll, blocked only by Crist acolyte eager to avoid embarrassment for Crist

we can add Florida's Hernando County GOP Committee to the list.  Fernando County is a "poor (median income- $32,572), very white rural area north of Tampa" whose County GOP just backed Rubio in a straw poll over Crist by a vote of 46-0.  Yup, 46-0.  To that, we can also add:

Marion County: Rubio 40, Crist 8
Gilchrist County: Rubio 11, Crist 1
GOP Women's Club of Duval Federated: Rubio 65, Crist 4
Northwest Orange GOP Women Federated: Rubio 49, Crist 3
Jefferson County GOP: Rubio 30, Crist 6
Florida Federation of College Republicans: Rubio 19, Crist 6

If you add up the eleven straw polls conducted, the total is Rubio 491, Crist 49.  In other words, among recorded Republican activists in Florida, Rubio is crushing Crist by just over a 10-to-1 margin.  But Crist has the support of the Republican "establishment."  To which Rubio says:

"If you are unhappy with the Republican establishment, then let's get a new establishment."

Rubio may be well on his way to accomplishing just that in the FL-GOP.

For daily news and analysis on the U.S. Senate races around the country, regularly read Senate Guru.

We've heard from a number of conservative Democratic Senators that a public option can't be included in a health care reform bill because the votes just wouldn't be there to pass it.  (All emphasis added by me.)

Joe Lieberman (I/Dem caucus-CT), 6/16/09:

probably the most important, the votes are not there for a public health plan, government run option and this can stand in the way of a historic achievement for President Obama

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), 6/21/09:

She told CNN's John King: "Well to be candid with you, I don't know that he has the votes right now. I think there's a lot of concern in the Democratic caucus."

Kent Conrad (D-ND), 8/16/09:

"The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option, there never have been, so to continue to chase that rabbit is just a wasted effort," Conrad said on Fox News Sunday.

Max Baucus (D-MT), 9/9/09:

He also said there are not enough votes in the Senate to pass the "public option," based on public and private conversations he's had with his colleagues.

Mark Pryor (D-AR), 9/10/09:

"My guess is that there are not votes to do it in the Senate, even a very modest public option like what he's talking about," Pryor said.

To Senators Lieberman, Feinstein, Conrad, Baucus, and Pryor, along with Senators Bayh, Johnson, Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson and Nelson: you ARE the votes!

Saying that you oppose a public option "because the votes aren't there" is a nonsensical excuse when the votes would be there if the people claiming that the votes aren't there voted for it!  You are the votes.  Quit copping out.

For daily news and analysis on the U.S. Senate races around the country, regularly read Senate Guru.

One of recent Republican Arlen Specter's weak but frequent lines of attack against Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak is that Congressman Sestak has missed handfuls of votes in the House.  Now, given the hundreds of procedural and substantive votes, most Representatives miss some votes here and there.  Still, Congressman Sestak's 94% attendance record in 2008, for instance, is very strong.  Nevertheless, Specter has, over and over again, harped on Congressman Sestak's attendance record.

August 4, on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

Specter, on Sestak: "He's missed 105 votes; worst record of any Pennsylvania member of the House of Representatives. He's AWOL, been absent without leave. If he were still in the Navy, he would be court martialed. Now he wants to be promoted. How can you be promoted with a voting record like that?

August 9, on CNN's State of the Union with John King:

''He talks about his military record. If he was still in the service, he would be a court martial, and he's been AWOL,'' Specter, appearing on CNN, said of Sestak, who has missed 15 percent of votes in 2009, ranking him 10th among the chamber's 434 members.

So apparently Specter thinks missing work, even to meet with constituents, is bad.  OK, fine.  Then how does Specter justify this?

Coaxing Arlen Specter into switching parties and running for re-election as a Democrat was a major coup for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is bending the Senate's schedule to accommodate a presidential fundraiser for Specter Tuesday afternoon in Pennsylvania.

Reid announced Friday that the Senate would hold no votes after 3 p.m. Tuesday. His office later said that the scheduling decision was meant to accommodate a long-planned fundraiser that President Obama is headlining in Philadelphia to benefit Specter's campaign.

The move could delay efforts to finish work on the fiscal 2010 transportation spending bill, which the Senate began considering Thursday.

Because of Specter's fundraiser, the entire U.S. Senate is shutting down Tuesday afternoon, delaying important transportation legislation.  After spending over a month weakly misleading voters on Congressman Sestak's attendance record, Specter is getting the principal to close the entire school early one afternoon to accommodate his political campaign.  Just more hypocrisy from Arlen Specter.  Hey, Arlen, for an encore in hypocrisy and dishonesty, why don't you create a website that looks like it's raising money for cancer research but actually sends all contributions right into your campaign coffers?  Oh, right, you already did that.

Does recent Republican Arlen Specter's all-too-frequent hypocrisy aggravate you?  Consider a contribution to Congressman Sestak via the Expand the Map! ActBlue page.

For daily news and analysis on the U.S. Senate races around the country, regularly read Senate Guru.

If the NRSC had its druthers, the establishment candidate for the Republicans in the upcoming special election for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts would be a former statewide elected official (former Gov. Mitt Romney, former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, former Gov. Paul Cellucci), someone with previous prominent governmental experience (former Presidential Chief of Staff Andrew Card, former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan), a prominent businessperson who could self-fund (former Carruth Capital president Christopher Egan), or a politically conservative celebrity (retired Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling).  It looks like none of these will be represented in the Republican establishment candidate.

It appears that the GOP establishment is coalescing around Republican state sen. Scott Brown.  Andrew Card even endorsed Brown as he announced that he would not be a candidate.  The only other Republicans to have expressed interest are Bob Burr, a Selectman from the town of Canton, Massachusetts' 85th most populous municipality, and Jack E. Robinson, who almost finished third (barely a percentage point ahead of the Libertarian candidate) in the 2000 U.S. Senate race.  So, barring a surprise candidacy, Scott Brown will be the Republican nominee.

Brown is one of only five Republican state senators in the forty-person body (to go along with only 19 Republicans in the 160-person body).  One could look at that and say that a Republican has no shot in overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts.  Another could look at that and say that Brown wins where other Republicans might not.

Which is the correct way to look at it?  Let's ask the National Republican Senatorial Committee.  Should anybody in Massachusetts think that Brown has even an outside chance to win?  Well, if the NRSC - the Republican campaign committee whose sole focus is electing Republicans to the U.S. Senate (i.e. they who should be Brown's biggest cheerleader) - publicly commits to ponying up serious cash for the special election (serious being at least $1 million), then Republicans and right-leaning independents can at least take heart that Washington D.C. is taking this race seriously.  However, if the NRSC will not publicly commit to spending a cool million or more in Massachusetts in support of Brown's candidacy, that means that they're writing it off.  If the Republican campaign committee whose sole focus is electing Republicans to the U.S. Senate writes Brown off, why shouldn't Massachusetts voters write Brown off?

So, ladies and gents of the NRSC, which is it?  A public commitment to spending serious dough in Massachusetts, or writing off the race altogether?  (At the very least, maybe the NRSC can hook Brown up with a better graphic designer.)

For daily news and analysis on the U.S. Senate races around the country, regularly read Senate Guru.

I'm very pleased to let you know that Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak, candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, will join us at Senate Guru today (Thursday, September 10) at 5pm Eastern Time for a live blog session.  I'm sure he will update us on how his campaign is going, discuss a variety of issues, offer his thoughts in response to the President's address on health care reform, and, of course, field your questions.

I hope you will be able to join us for the first candidate liveblog session of the 2010 cycle at Senate Guru; and, be sure to bring your questions for Congressman Sestak.  (And, if you're really excited for the conversation, support Congressman Sestak with a contribution via the Expand the Map! ActBlue page.)

In the meantime, enjoy reading Congressman Sestak's diary from earlier this week at Daily Kos - here's an excerpt:

This week, join me in signing a petition, which calls on our congressional leaders, Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate, to hold an up or down roll call vote on the public option.

Right now, 14,000 people are losing their health care coverage every day because our costs are skyrocketing. Meanwhile, too many politicians in Washington, who seem to be ignoring the lessons from Wall Street, would rather leave our health insurance reform up to the insurance companies.  No matter what the final bill looks like, we deserve to know how our Representatives and Senators will vote on a public option - up or down!

On the web:
Joe Sestak for Senate
Senate Guru
Senate Guru Facebook Group
Senate Guru's Expand the Map! ActBlue Page