reprinted from Daily Kos
by
Larry Thorson
The
news is out on Swing State Project: Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia have
made the list of South Florida candidates-to-back by the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee. Read it here.
Now,
what does this mean? They will raise more money to continue waging
strong campaigns against the Diaz-Balart brothers, Lincoln in FL-21 and
Mario in FL-25, facing Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia, respectively.
And once again it will put the spotlight on our invulnerable
Democratic U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) and Kendrick
Meek (FL-17) as to whether they will get wholeheartedly on the team and
campaign for their fellow Democrats. (If you don't know the background
on this, pop back to some of the posts starting in March on this blog and read up.)
This Red-to-Blue development was entirely predictable when this all
started, so I'm wondering still why the Democratic incumbents were so
categorical in their refusals to be on the team.
I also suspect that Garcia and Martinez are doing well partly
because Barack Obama is doing better and better in Florida -- the
coattail effect already showing up. See this morning that Obama is
leading McCain in Florida in a fresh Quinnipiac poll -- and that was probably taken before McCain started talking about drilling for oil spills off Florida's coast.
With strong support from women, blacks and younger voters,
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the apparent Democratic presidential
contender, leads Arizona Sen. John McCain, expected to be the
Republican candidate, among likely voters in Florida, Ohio and
Pennsylvania, according to simultaneous Quinnipiac University Swing
State polls released today.
This is against all received wise opinion a few months ago. Open your minds, folks.
Now we have to keep working to get Annette Taddeo (FL-18) on the Red
to Blue list and take out my congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.