anyone who has?
First is the money. My Congressman, a pretty good guy, started fundraising for 2014 the day after the election last year. You need a serious organization to collect and spend the money. Even for my small run for local office I was told I have to come up with at least $1,000 and a Congressman needs closer to half a million now. Mine needs a lot more than that to keep his seat, and may become the most expensive race in history next year.
Campaigning is a 24 hour 7-day job. You have to eat a ton of rubber chicken and shake a zillion hands just to get to the nomination stage. Then you have to fight that other asshole, which means more rubber chicken and talking to every Rotary chapter, Ethnic-group-of-the-day, Chamber of Commerce, and any other group that has two or more votes and demands your attention. You hang out on street corners in the rare time you have between the two or three meetings you have every day. Locally, we hang out on the sidewalk front of Post Offices and the IGA supermarket or phone bank, or knock on doors if we have nothing else to do.
And, umm..., do you have a job or business that requires your attention during this run to glory? Will you be able to quit if you win? Go back to it if you lose?
Do you have a tough enough skin to handle the abuse? In one debate, the audience feedback I got was that I did great. The paper that sponsored it, though, wrote me off as lightweight barely worth a mention. Might have been because I called two of the questions stupid and the paper has a thinner skin than I do. Anyway, I have to deal with that now. A big lesson learned-- I was smoother with the Chamber of Commerce shindig we all had to go to. But, the two Greek Orthodox churches in the area that invited us all to speak were, to my surprise, actually almost fun. (And the food was great.)
And who are the voters? Gerrymandering or not, they are the ones who actually, ummm... vote, and you have to appeal to them more than the other guy does. How does that fit into your personal view of the issues, life, and everything? They already elected the asshole you are running against, so how do you get them on your side? How would, say, a liberal environmentalist win in a district of conservative farmers? (Hint-- by not being a liberal environmentalist)
This is not to say we shouldn't give it a shot, but going up the line to county, state and national, your Democratic organizations take a close look at their limited resources and your chances at winning and will support you accordingly.
My point isn't defeatist (would I be doing this if I were defeatist...) or that we shouldn't try to go out and get good candidates to run against the assholes, but understand why it is so difficult. It's not just national strategy, but your local county and state Democratic organizations are often in a mess and more often have limited resources for a Congressional campaign in teabag strong areas.
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