This will be a short diary - my message is pretty simple.

* Debbie Cook is a great candidate, a good progressive, and will represent the 46th district with distinction;

* Dana Rohrabacher is a bum

* If you give to Debbie here by tomorrow (Monday) midnight

* I'll match your donation.

* Get bigger bang for your progressive donation - give to Debbie now.  

Thanks

.... I actually a personal anecdote I have to add that demonstrates how important it is for Debbie to get the message out. Follow below the fold.

I can't divulge how I got my hands on this, but what follows is a portion of one of the prime time convention speeches that picks up on joeyess' fantastic idea of the jingling McCain keys.  

I think you'll be thrilled how unbelievably quickly this was picked up full force by the party and how much they're running with it.  Joe Biden's McCain house jab on Saturday is just the beginning.    

Speech below the fold:

You all have probably heard of the IL-03: 5000 challenge for the netroots, to get 5000 contributors for Mark Pera.  

Well, I'm announcing a IL-03: 3333 'Mini-Challenge":

As I write this we stand at 3016 contributors on ActBlue.  If that total reaches 3333 by midnight tonight (Pacific), I'll kick in another $333.33 from my own pocket to Mark's campaign.  

Your $10 or $20 or $5 if that's all you can spare could get us there.  Chip in if you haven't already.  Then bug any other Democrat you know who likes progressives and tell them to act now.  

Giving to Mark will help support scientific research efforts in medicine
Giving to Mark will help the cause of reproductive rights
Giving to Mark will help bolster our constitutional rights
Giving to Mark will strike a blow to the Chicago political machine
Giving to Mark will hold a Bush appeasing war supporter accountable

and a new one

Giving to Mark will make Rahm Emmanuel cry

Take a couple minutes and donate yourself if you haven't already.  Or nudge someone else if you have.  I really want us to make it to 3333 and have folks make me open my wallet for Mark.  

MoveOn.org has endorsed Donna Edwards' campaign against corporatist hack Al Wynn.  

MoveOn has millions of emails of members - if it sends out an email appeal (I haven't received one in my inbox yet), then this is a real gamechanger.  

I hope it's only the first of a number of primary challenge endorsements from MoveOn.  Methings Mark Pera is at the front of the line now..

UPDATE: Matt Stoller over at Open Left says that:

In addition to the back-and-forth between SEIU and Wynn, there are a few other pieces moving in this race. Moveon sent a fundraising email on behalf of Donna to their whole list, after 84% of their members in the district endorsed Donna. So she should be pulling in a good amount of cash, as well as support from Moveon members. There's very little polling in this race, and the vote by Moveon members is one sign that activists are still excited about beating Wynn.

There's no link provided regarding the email to the full list or for the 84% - and I should add that I haven't seen the email from MoveOn in my inbox yet. If I can get confirmation on those details, I'll share it here.

UPDATE: Since I posted the diary, I have found the email from MoveOn that asked us members to participate in their survey. It was from 9/6/07, and at the end it said

We'll report back to you next week on the results of the survey.

I never got that "report back" - did you?

As you may know, MoveOn has the ability to raise significant amounts of money through an email appeal to their membership (which numbers in the millions).  Back when they countered Lieberman's fundraising event for Susan Collins by putting out an email appeal for Tom Allen, over $355,000 was raised for him in a matter of a couple days.  

I think it's fair to say that getting Pera and Edwards comparably funded (or better funded than) compared to Lipinski and Wynn mean our guys will win. This should be right down MoveOn's alley of something they would be for, and it has the ability to make that happen.  So what are they waiting for?

So, since MoveOn has the ability to get these two great candidates into office, why aren't they doing that?

A couple things:

If you - or your friends or family - give to Mark Pera on my Mark Pera fundraiser page by next Saturday, I'll kick in a matching donation of my own.  Check it out.  

(I've done this kind of matching pledge before (including earlier this month for Mark Pera) so take that as assurance that my pledge is for real).

The details:

You may have emailed the campaigns through the ColorOfChange.org website; you may have even personalized the email instead of sending along the pre-typed letter.  But if are going to succeed in building pressure (or creating a sh*tstorm, if you will), we need to make the call too:

Campaign Numbers:
(919) 636-3131  Edwards
(866) 675-2008  Obama
(202) 263-0180  Clinton

(505) 982-2291 Richardson

More below

ActBlue is now up and running with draft funds for potential Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore, Wes Clark, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson, among others.

Any money you give will go to them if they enter the race to win the presidential nomination, and if they don't, it'll go to the DNC at the Convention.

This thing has been live since mid-November, but the number of contributors for these 4 potential candidates stands at barely over 100 and the total dollar amount donated is just $5,000.  

But it doesn't appear that the so-far-paltry count of donations is related to the draft funds' popularity. Rather, it seems that this has just not gotten a lot of attention. (more)