I'm really stoked that we were able to hit our fundraising goal for MyDD's Road to 60 Act Blue page in the less than a week that the list has been up. We were able to put money into the coffers of campaigns that can really use it -- campaigns that can help the Democrats reach the threshold of 60 seats in the United States Senate, campaigns that are nevertheless overlooked by many.

But for those who wondered why you go out on a limb every once in a while to support a long-shot candidacy, one that the race-handicappers (including some of us in the Netroots) may pooh-pooh at, Charles Pierce tells a story of one such race that could have made a huge difference had a few more folks been paying attention a couple decades ago (h/t Eschaton):

In 1990, while I was in the employ of a now-defunct all-sports daily newspaper, I went to Atlanta to work on a piece about Evander Holyfield, who was preparing to fight James (Buster) Douglas for the heavyweight champeenship of the woild (!). Anyway, one night, my hotel was hosting a fundraiser for a guy named David Worley, a lawyer who was running against Newt Gingrich. What the hell, I thought, maybe the hors d'oeuvres are good. I went down to the ballroom and, in the course of extensive freeloading, I talked to a number of people from the Worley campaign who were absolutely convinced that their guy could take Gingrich down. They were extremely frosted at the Democratic National Committee, which barely bothered to return their phone calls. By the end of the evening, they even had me convinced. Turns out they were right. I made a little coin taking Worley and five points against some of the hepcat political pros of my casual acquaintance.

In case you didn't click the second link in that quoted section, as it so happened David Worley, a then 32 year-old candidate who was overlooked by the pundits and who received only a $5,000 check late in the race from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, lost to New Gingrich in during the 1990 midterms by only about 980 of the roughly 156,000 votes cast in the Georgia district. What's more, he apparently did this not only without much of any national attention or help, he did it without having the money to advertise on television.

One need not think back even that far for examples of races coming out of nowhere to shock the race-watchers. In 2006, Carol Shea-Porter and Nancy Boyda ran decidedly outsider campaigns on track to win competitive or even reddish congressional districts in New Hampshire and Kansas, respectively. Even more recently, Democrats swept a trio of special elections during the spring in districts that tended to lean 6 to 10 points more Republican than the nation as a whole in presidential elections.

But the Worley example stands out for another reason: It is possible to stop some of these people before they inflict their damage upon the country. Hindsight is 20/20, and it's always easy to play Monday morning quarterback (or in this case 18-year-later quarterback), but if Worley had gotten even just a slightly stronger end of the cycle push in 1990, it's possible that he would have won, depriving the nation of Gingrich even before he and his demagoguery came to control the Congress.

This isn't just a "what if", however -- it's a wake-up call. It is why contesting every seat is so important. I know nothing about the Worley candidacy, save for the fact that Worley ran as an outsider against then-House Minority Whip Gingrich during the 1990 midterms (which, by the way, were good but not great for the Democrats, who added a net 8 seats to their majority in the House counting Bernie Sanders in Vermont), but it was quite possibly the case that he wasn't the most progressive candidate that fall. However, a narrow victory rather than a narrow loss for Worley would have meant no Speaker Gingrich, and no Speaker Gingrich would have meant, well... you get the picture.

That's yet another reason it is so important to expand the map and run a truly 50-state campaign. So thank you for your help in pushing to Road to 60 page reach its goal, as well as for contributing to other candidates and other efforts elsewhere.