Polls and Money

Josh Marshall at TPM has been riding Democrats in safe seats and Democrats not up for re-relection to pony up some of their excess cash to help out those Democrats who are in tight races. It goes without saying, of course, that such folks should be doing their damnedest to help out, emptying their coffers to assist fellow Dems in need --- especially if not only are their seats safe but not even up for re-election this cycle.
While Marshall has gotten some e-mails that say John Kerry has been available and willing to fundraise for folks, he can certainly do a lot more, given that he's still holding on to a sizable warchest left over from his failed presidential run in 2004. With that in mind, I give you Hey, John:

In 2004, over 171,154 Americans donated $328,479,245 and countless hours of time to help John Kerry get elected President. Now, two years later, Democrats have a real opportunity to regain a majority in both chambers of Congress.

John Kerry? He’s still hanging on to $8,352,685 of our money, while Democratic candidates in competitive districts are short on funds, and the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC are out of money.

Tell John Kerry to “let our money go” and help take back Congress by sending an email to info@johnkerry.com.

I don't begrudge our junior Senator for wanting to have some scratch should he deem himself a viable candidate in a couple years, but I do think that he should feel obligated to dole some of that out to candidates who need it now. Should he garner the nomination in 2008 --- and now we're way into Hypothetical Land --- I'm sure those candidates he helped out will be more than willing to help him, and he can remind all of us that he did this in order to help secure a Democratic majority in 2006. So, please, send him a line and tell him to use our money wisely this time.

Before I get back to the paper I'm supposed to be writing, I want to point out the newest Zogby poll for our gubernatorial election, in which Kerry Healey's negative and insubstantial campaign comes back to bite her in the ... numbers. Whereas she seemed to be narrowing the gap between herself and Deval Patrick with the initial onslaught of attack ads, it now appears that she's carried on the attack too long. Patrick's re-opened his lead, now up to 22 points, with 56% of the vote headed his way. Healey's barely got a third of the state in her corner. With less than three weeks remaining before election day, Healey and Hillman are going to have to work awful hard to even make this one close. (I hope that doesn't jinx anyone.)

Now back to writing about the goodness of creation amidst the fallen nature of humanity, which is completely un-related to the above. Completely.