Rich Anthony: "Will Coffee Party Brew Up Victory in 2010?"

Check out Rich Anthony's Daily Kos live blog and please comment and recommend it if you can. Thanks. For now, here's an excerpt.

...Like many of you, I attended one of the nearly 400 Coffee Parties yesterday and I think an answer is easily available with these groups.

When you look back to elections where Democrats and Progressives have been successful, they have mostly had strong grassroot movements behind them, with people who have been willing to talk to their neighbors and complete strangers about a positive progressive vision for our country. The people, who showed up at the Coffee Party I attended, are the same people who have organized for successful progressive candidates in the past. These people went door to door for Jim Webb in 2006 and for Barack Obama in 2008, talking about progressive values. However, election cycle after cycle there is a conventional wisdom that creeps up, if Democrats act meek or act like Republicans and don’t strongly proclaim any values that people will vote for them… when has this ever worked?

We need campaigns with energized volunteers to organize in their communities to get a strong progressive message out to the voters. We need campaigns where the people who came out to the Coffee Parties will want to volunteer and spread a message, campaigns where people involved in local progressive organizations or local Democratic parties will do more than simply vote or work their poll on Election Day. I am committed to bringing a strong message of progressive values. This is the type of campaign I am going to run and come November, I look forward to proving conventional wisdom wrong.