Fred2Blue

Our long national local nightmare is over.

The recent announcement from Lowell Feld that RaisingKaine would be closing it’s cyber-doors at year’s end came as a shock to a lot of people. There are some outstanding state political blogs out there, Burnt Orange Report in Texas and My Left Nutmeg in Connecticut come to mind. But I really think that RK set the standard and did for Virginia Democrats what DailyKos (aka The Great Orange Satan) has done for Democrats nationwide. The Draft Webb movement, for example, not only ended the political career of the most powerful Republican in the commonwealth, but may have actually saved this country (George Allen was THE frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination heading into 2006). People like Lowell Feld, Josh Chernilla, and Lee Diamond believed that Allen could be defeated when nobody else did. Others in the netroots believed that VA could turn blue in 2008 when nobody else did. It did.

Here’s a quick recap of what happened in Virginia since RK launched to help propel Tim Kaine to the Governor’s mansion in ‘05.

2005: Tim Kaine elected Governor
2006: Jim Webb Elected Senator
2007: Democrats take over the State Senate
2008: Mark Warner elected Senator, Democrats take 6 of 11 House seats, Obama wins the state’s 13 electoral votes.

RK founder and guru Lowell Feld may be gone, but the rest of the band is getting back together. Josh, teacherken, aznew, KathyinBlacksburg, Evan M, Bryan Scrafford, Grey Havens, dsvabeachdems, myself, and others are now blogging at Blue Commonwealth.

Hopefully Blue Commonwealth will be to RaisingKaine what ‘Fraiser’ was to ‘Cheers’ (and not what ‘Joanie Loves Chachi’ was to ‘Happy Days’. yeeech).

Nov. 09, 2006 - Webb Defeats Allen (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)