Last night, I read a piece on MyDD which made me smile.

In her journal, a blogger named desmoinesdem carefully laid out five reasons for supporting Democratic legislative candidates in the fall. She's spot on. (And by the way, the candidate she mentions first -- Jerry Sullivan -- is putting DLCCWeb to good use. Check it out).

I encourage you to read her entire post, but I want to draw attention to one particular argument she makes:

You may think that Obama will give down-ticket candidates all the help they need in November. But depending on where you live, the Obama campaign may not be putting its GOTV muscle in the crucial legislative districts.

I was very concerned to learn a few days ago that the Iowa Democratic Party has in effect shut down its "coordinated campaign" and transferred control over GOTV statewide to the Obama campaign.

What's best for maximizing Obama's presidential vote is not necessarily what's best for maximizing the number of Democrats elected to the state legislature.

This is great point that is often missed in national political analysis. Even by organizing an unprecedented ground game, the national ticket might not help some of our candidates. And in those places, we're going to depend on volunteers and activists (like desmoinesdem) to contribute their time knocking on doors and making calls in order to win legislative races.