October 30, 2008 08:09 PM UTC

Senator Tom Strickland

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• by: dslater

(Remember, thou art mortal – promoted by Colorado Pols)

(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)

I’m sure you all are familiar with Tom Strickland, the United States Senator that Mark Udall is running to replace, right?  What’s that?  He’s not a Senator?  Oh, yeah, that’s right — he lost.

I last ran into Tom Strickland at an event during the Democratic National Convention in August.  It was a brief meeting, but it certainly brought up a lot of memories of the campaign trail in 2002.  Tom seemed to be doing okay — enjoying his life in the “private sector”; however, I know that Colorado (and America) would have been much better if he had won in 2002 instead of Wayne Allard.

It was this very point in 2002 — the weekend before the election — that I was standing on a stage with Strickland at Pueblo’s Union Depot, just a few hundred yards from where Senator Barack Obama will be speaking on Saturday.  The atmosphere was quite upbeat; a new statewide poll by one of the Denver newspapers had put Strickland up by something like 6 points.  There was a clear air of confidence that we were standing with our next United States Senator.  

A few days later, Colorado’s voters had a different message to send.

In 2004, the polls taken at this point in the election cycle — less than a week left before the election — showed John Kerry with a one-point lead in Colorado.  He lost by around five points.  

Look, I’m not trying to pour cold water on the idea that we can win Colorado; we most certainly can.  But we have to work like we’re five points down.  We cannot let up any bit.  This is still the sprint to the finish line.  For those of you looking at this on the Internet, this short video is instructive (and funny):

(For those reading this via e-mail, you can find the video here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xnk9aqih8o

Now, I’m going to do something “rogue” right now.  I’m NOT going to encourage you to see Barack Obama in Pueblo Saturday.  If you’re interested, the event will be at the corner of Union and D streets, and the gates open at 1:00 for the 3:00 event.  But you can do a LOT more good for the campaign if you spend that time knocking on doors and making phone calls for the campaign.  

If you DO insist on going, then you need to do one thing:  bring somebody with you who is not quite sure about voting for Senator Obama.  I totally understand the appeal and allure of seeing history in Southern Colorado.  I do.  But make sure that you’ve got somebody with you that still needs a little convincing if you’re going to go.  We’ve proven to the world that Coloradans will show up for Barack Obama — some reports say last Sunday’s event in Denver was the largest political rally in the history of our nation.  

We now need to prove to the world that Colorado will VOTE for Barack Obama.  And Mark Udall.  And Betsy Markey.  And Hank Eng.  And Hal Bidlack.  And John Salazar, Ed Perlmutter, Diana DeGette, and Jared Polis.  And our many great State House and State Senate candidates.