Now that Paul Hackett lost his race, the inevitable incriminations will begin. The DLCers will claim that they knew all along that Hackett couldn't win, and that supporting him was a waste of time (of course, they never predicted that he would finish so strongly in a Republican stronghold). The grassroots will claim that if the DLC had supported him several months ago, he could have made Schmidt look even worse (and he would have gotten his message out more effectively). The grassroots will also claim that this is a success for the grassroots, mobilization, the internets, etc.

Wrong. We lost. A few years back, the Washington Redskins'-America's politically incorrect football team-coach used to talk about how they were "making progress." Hall of Fame quarterback Sonny Jurgensen once growled (probably more than once) that instead of making progress, they should try winning some football games. We won't take back the House until we win seats. Pryhhic victories don't cut it at this point.

Having said that, I would like to suggest that rather than engaging in the traditional circular firing squad, we adopt a two-prong strategy. Let the DLC and the party establishment support their 30-40 candidates that are either on the fence or could likely knock off a Republican. Meanwhile, let the grassroots support all the wildcards.

What do I mean by that? The lesson I think we should learn from Paul Hackett's race is that many Congressional races will be very close. To paraphrase the IRA, we only have to get lucky once (or actually about ten times). I figure there will be about 200 seats (maybe 180) that are low probability wins for the Democrats. We should mobilize enough cash and divvy it out to each of these candidates (and some might be excluded because they are really awful). If 500,000 Democrats on average gave $100 to such a fund, that would be roughly $250,000 per longshot candidate. We could even call it the Democratic Insurgency Fund (just kidding).

Would that outspend incumbent Republican candidates? Of course not. But it would allow Democratic challengers to lurk around, waiting for targets of opportunity. Like I said, we don't have to get lucky too often. If nothing else, this would pin down Republicans and make it harder for them to marshall their resources: congressmen would be less likely to support other party members financially because they would have to worry about their own races. As an added bonus, it would motivate the local Democratic infrastructures for both Senate and local races.

So let the DLC claim the easy victories-more power to them. Fellow grassrooters, the greater the hardship, the greater the glory.

This was cross-posted here.