It never stops

I bet when you read the subject of today's post you just assumed I'd cast on for a bag or mittens or clogs or a sweater or even – gasp! – another hat!

We interrupt this blog post to show off the Cabled Helmet Hat,
which is just about the cutest thing evah! It fits me perfectly, but
it's very, very warm. I doubt if I would wear it more than a couple
times a year. What to do, what to do ... I think it will be auctioned
off next year, along with the Cabled Beret, to raise money for the
Blue Team – that would be West Virginia Democrats.

Well, I haven't. Cast on a new project, that is. I'm still thinking about what I'd like to work on next.

No, what never stops, apparently, is West Virginia politics. Shelley Moore Capito, our 2nd District Congresswoman and a Republican who was just elected to her seventh term in the House of Representatives, is announcing this morning her run for the Senate in 2014. She'll be going up against our senior senator, five-term Democrat Jay Rockefeller.

He's a prince of a Senator, and West Virginia can't afford to lose him.

And so, the campaign begins. Again. HOWEVER … it's not just a campaign for the Senate seat, because she will be vacating her seat in Congress. We have a great opportunity to take the 2nd District from the GOP and turn it blue again.

We need a good candidate, of course, and my beef with the State Democratic Party is they haven't been grooming candidates. It's been rumored for a couple of years that this Congressional seat would open up because Ms. Capito had her eyes on a bigger prize, but I think this announcement has taken a few Democrats here by surprise.

And there's not much time to get ready. Not only do we not know who the Republicans have in mind, we have a somewhat moderate Democrat machine here in West Virginia, leaving those of us who sit to the left of the salad fork either holding our noses to vote blue, or staying home for the mid-terms.

We just can't do that this time. Democrats need to define what it is to be a Democrat and we need to sell that to all those Democrat voters who voted for Romney and we need to do it NOW.

I think it's going to take more than party favors to win this one.