Four years ago, while watching the Democratic Convention in my living room in England, I joined DailyKos so I could talk about the speeches and our candidate with other Americans interested in politics.  I had friends who were Americans and others where were interested in politics, but I had to go online for the combination of the two.

This year I will watch the convention from a very different seat, as a member of the Pennsylvania delegation.  How did I become a delegate?  The short answer is that I applied last December and the campaign picked me.  The longer answer is that I helped start Philadelphia for Obama back in August, and have been building a movement here in Philly for about a year now.  I have participated in every phase of the campaign, and stayed here in PA even when it was very tempting to abandon my turf and head to an earlier state.  I have been the point person for the visibility outside two Democratic Presidential debates, one in October the other in April, and helped make sure that Obama had a full slate of delegates on the ballot for the first time in at least a generation.

It is easy to get upset and frustrated when we lose important fights in Congress, especially after working so hard in 2006 to win us a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate.  We shouldn't forget that some of the people we fought hard for and gave money for have our backs now.  The lesson of 2007 is that we need to fight even harder to keep the Representatives who have done good by us get more good people in Congress who share our values who have courage, integrity and honor, who will step up and speak for the American people, our troops and take seriously their oath to defend the Constitution.  As kos wrote, "This is it. This is the way to change our party."

I don't think that it surprised anyone that Hilary Clinton decided to go negative now that it looks like her position as front runner is threatened.  Indeed I don't think that very many of us are surprised that she went very negative when she decided it was time to go negative.  What really surprised me is that she did such a poor job of it.

For months now she has been telling us that she is the only one who knows how to fight toe-to-toe when the Republicans attack, and she assured us that she was ready.  When she attacked a fellow Democrat, I expected her to show us this vaunted ability to really drive the hit home.  The Clinton campaign has taken their swing at Barack Obama and to our collective astonishment, she missed.

I was looking over stats at Open Secrets trying to see if I could find out patterns of donations within an industry.  Turns out that isn't easy to do, but I did get distracted by looking into the state by state fundraising numbers.  It turns out that Obama is the top fundraiser only in Illinois, Hawaii, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota, Vermont, Washington and Colorado.

There are several states in which Obama is the top Democrat. States like Idaho, Utah, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Wyoming.  In fact in Mississippi Obama out raises everyone except Thompson and McCain.  In Wisconsin only Thompson beats Obama.

I know that right now he is focused on his campaign for the Presidency, but he will probably know whether or not he is in position to win the Democratic nomination sometime between January 3rd and February 5th.  The deadline for getting into the Senate Race in North Caroline against Libby Dole is February 29th.

In 2009, the Senate will be the deciding body for a large number of progressive proposals from Universal Health Care to Restoring our Civil Liberties and Energy Independence.  We need more strong progressives in the Senate to help fight to make these reforms law and to make sure that we can pass the best possible versions of these reforms.

Thanksgiving is the most American of holidays.  It is rooted in our founding myths, in the struggle of European immigrants to understand and survive in a new land.  In the triumph of perseverance and neighborly virtue over the harshness of the world we find ourselves in.  We gather together with family and friends and eat new world foods to celebrate the survival of our founding settlers and the most beautiful time of the year for much of our country.

This is my third Thanksgiving in America since spending the prior five Thanksgivings in England.  Living there gave me a much greater appreciation of what it means to be an American, to have rights, and to fight for those rights.  I am immensely thankful that I am an American and that we have rights for me to defend.

Pure and simple all the policy ideas in the world don't matter if I don't trust you to do what you say, don't think you have the leadership abilities to do what you plan, or think that you have the backbone to follow through when you are challenged.  I know that many people here will choose their candidate based purely on positions, but I don't think that is true of most of the electorate nor do I think it should be.

We are electing candidates based on what we think they will do in the future, and how they will affect the future of our nation.  Past performance is usually a good indicator of how they will perform in the future, but so is our own judgement of what they really plan to do and why they plan to do it.  We also need to be confident that they have the intelligence and judgement to make good decisions about problems that have yet to arise.  For all of these reasons we need to choose a candidate who has both integrity and ability.

The Democrats proposed a bill that would fund the troops, and help to bring this war to a close.  The Republicans in the House voted against it and the Republicans in the Senate did not allow it to go to a vote.  They are the ones refusing to fund the war.  They claim that the DOD needs the money to support our troops, but for some reason they are unwilling to take the money as offered.

Too bad, elections have consequences and they have to stop whining and telling us that they can't accept the majority will of our country and of the congress.  There are times when leaders have to lead and go against the will of the people, but in this case they have failed to lead and failed to convince the people or the congress that they are in the right.

I heard a statement from Barack Obama in his Meet the Press Interview on Sunday that is very important to me.  He said "there will be no permanent bases."  Personally, I think that this is the most important commitment on Iraq that a candidate for our Presidency can make before taking the oath of office.  I think that it is the that our bases are permanent most clearly takes us across that line between liberator or peace keeper and occupier.  It arrogantly assumes that there will be no sovereign Iraq which might not want our troops in their country for the foreseeable future creates a mentally among both Iraqi nationals and our troops that we are in this for the long haul.

For most on you the most exciting part of last Tuesday night's Democratic Debate here in Philadelphia was what was said by the candidates inside the debate.  For me it was all the people outside the debate screaming in support of their candidates.  That isn't because I am unhappy with how my candidate did, in fact I agree with the Drexel students watching just outside.  It is because I was the volunteer organizer responsible for making sure that Obama supporters were out in force showing their enthusiasm for Barack Obama.

I worked hard preparing for the event and had a great time showing my enthusiasm for Obama waving signs and screaming at the top of my lungs.  I am so gratified that we had so many people come out, despite a very dreadful pre-party fear that no one would actually show up.  My day was exhausting and crazy and I would absolutely recommend that all of you do something similar.

This weekend marked the beginning of Philadelphia for Obama's Get Out the Vote project for this year's State and Local election on November 6th.  Even though Barack Obama is not on that ballot, and won't be until April 22nd we believe that we need to be spending our time and energy helping get Democrats to the polls for this Fall's elections.  To that end, the grassroots team for Barack Obama here in Pennsylvania has decided to push getting our volunteers to participate in Get Out the Vote activities statewide and help out with local candidates they like in the run up to this coming general election.

Another week, another story on the AP about how we are letting down our brave men and women in the military.  This week, the story is that our troops are committing suicide at record rates.

Ninety-nine U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year, the highest rate of suicide in the Army in 26 years of record-keeping.

Nearly a third of the soldiers who committed suicide did so while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to a report released Thursday. Iraq accounted for most of those -- with 27 of the suicides coming from that conflict and three from Afghanistan. Also, there were 948 attempted suicides, officials said, adding that they didn't have a comparison for previous years.

I have voiced my concerns about a Hilary nomination before, but an LA times story illustrates very clearly one of my points.  The strategic worry that Hilary Clinton is very divisive character in American politics, and that should she win our nomination she would energize the republican base.  That division would lead once again to another razor thin election which hinges on one or two states, and her coattails wouldn't take our down ticket candidates very far.

That concern it seems is shared by highly placed democrats around the country:

The chairman of a Midwest state party called Clinton a nightmare for congressional and state legislative candidates.

A Democratic congressman from the West, locked in a close re-election fight, said Clinton is the Democratic candidate most likely to cost him his seat.

A strategist with close ties to leaders in Congress said Democratic Senate candidates in competitive races would be strongly urged to distance themselves from Clinton.

"The argument with Hillary right now in some of these red states is she's so damn unpopular," said Andy Arnold, chairman of the Greenville, S.C., Democratic Party. "I think Hillary is someone who could drive folks on the other side out to vote who otherwise wouldn't."

"Republicans are upset with their candidates," Arnold added, "but she will make up for that by essentially scaring folks to the polls."

Somehow the phrases "Family Values" and "Support our Troops" have become partisan, Republican mantras in today's divisive political climate.  Yet, both those phrases ring hollow when we see what the Bush administration is doing to the families of our soldiers.

A few days ago, I stopped by a corner market to buy some ice and saw a rather shocking story in the USA Today:

Army wives whose husbands are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have committed markedly higher rates of child neglect and abuse than when their spouses are home, according to a study Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The Army-funded study found child neglect was almost four times greater during periods when the husbands were at war. Physical child abuse was nearly twice as high during combat deployments.