I haven't done much of anything since Tuesday that required that I engage my brain. My evenings have consisted mostly of mindless channel surfing.
Last night when I sat down in front of the television, all the channels were in Spanish. I think what probably happened was that I inadvertently hit something on the remote that reprogrammed the television for Spanish translation. On the other hand, Vernon Robinson did say that if I was re-elected, we'd all have to learn Spanish. It was like something out of...well, The Twilight Zone.
Thank you for all you did this year to help me and Democrats all over the country. The netroots were engaged and gave campaigns real energy. On election day we had hundreds of people standing for hours at polling places in a cold, driving rain. We had dozens more calling to get out the vote. We raised almost $1.8 million, much of it in small increments from thousands of people. Oh yeah, and I got 64 percent of the vote in a purple district against an opponent who probably spent $2 million.
We weren't exactly starting from scratch. I'd been elected to Congress twice before, and to the state legislature four times. But we grew our campaign dramatically this year. A big part of that was because of the support from the netroots. And other candidates, Larry Kissell for instance, did build impressive campaigns from scratch largely because of netroots support.
Because of the work of grassroots Democrats all over the country, I now have the chance to serve in the majority. Congress will likely pass a strong predatory lending bill early next year, and the Science Committee will take a hard look at whether federally funded scientific research is being manipulated to fit a political agenda.
I cannot tell you how much more satisfying that will be than the last four years have been.
Now I just need to learn how to reprogram my television back to English.