Let me start with a bit of bona fides.  I was the 2004 Democratic nominee for Congress in Nevada’s 3^rd Congressional District.  Our campaign team worked incredibly hard, raised and spent about $2.4 million, and came up short.  The voters sent back to Washington an incumbent who had done nothing but recite mindless platitudes and hide from the press while his campaign flooded the District with false and ugly ads and mailers.  They did it on TV, on radio, in mailboxes.  And they weren’t shy about where.  ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, Howard Stern – pick your poison, they made sure it was everywhere.

Two years later in 2006 we worked our tails off to elect Tessa Hafen in that same 3^rd District.  Bluntly, she did a hell of a lot better than we did, but still lost - just barely - by 3,800 votes in another nasty campaign that almost matched the lows of 2004 in ugliness.  I have analyzed that race in earlier columns.

My point simply is this.  In Nevada, and throughout most of the West, Democrats don’t win by preaching to the choir.  No matter how hard you work, no matter how much money you raise, and no matter how fanatic the netroots may be - you don’t win unless you reach beyond the true-believers.

And that is precisely what the NVDems are trying to do.  Frankly, my first reaction when I heard about the Fox broadcast plan was probably the same as those who are still outraged – what the devil are we doing?  But when the rest of my brain kicked in, seconds later, I concluded: right on – go for it!

I have been a Democrat for more years than some of the protesters have been alive.  I was in DC as a young Senate staffer when Nixon was bugging phones and orchestrating dirty tricks with Don Segretti.  I was in Miami in 1972 at the Democratic convention that sent McGovern out to joust with windmills.  I watched my Republican law partner become Ronald Reagan’s attorney general in 1980.  I celebrated in 1992 when Bill Clinton finally got it right in building a coalition that recaptured the White House.  I frothed at the mouth in 2000 when Florida was bungled and stolen from Al Gore.  And I shared the same candidate’s podium with John Kerry in the Thomas and Mack Arena in Las Vegas before 13,000 people in 2004.  I know what it’s like to win, and I sure as hell know what it’s like to lose.

I know there are many Democrats that believe that George Bush has made such a mess that whoever the Democrats nominate in 2008 should win.  Maybe.  But the bottom line is that the only way Democrats can sustain the gains achieved in 2006 and add to them in 2008 is to win in the West.  To do that, we need to reach people who may never have heard a Democrat speak, or if they have, it has only been filtered through the rhetoric of the right.  Fox is what it is, and their “expert analysis” will be the same, whether the debate is on their network or someone else’s.  But I for one would rather have our candidates’ own messages out there in their own words on Fox and not just leave it to their talking heads.
 

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