My Left Nutmeg -- a terrific blog for all things Connecticut -- reviewed DLCCWeb this week:

For many campaigns, technical knowledge and the cost of Web design consultants are barriers.

Now that other national committee, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) has stepped into the void with DLCCWeb, a service aimed at making it easy and cheap for state legislative candidates to have a professional-looking and powerful online presence. For $40 per month and no start up fees, any Democratic candidate can get:

• Web site hosting, including a content editor (no HTML knowledge required), use of prebuilt templates or customized designs, and a blog feature;
• An online database that enables campaigns to import or export lists of supporters;
• Unlimited e-mail blasts to supporters, with the ability to segment and target the list;
• Three e-mail accounts; and
• An event registration tool.

While I'm not necessarily endorsing this over other services, it is a good example of a party committee stepping up to help establish an important and inexpensive infrastructural tool for a huge number of candidates.

Connecticut is in fact one of the states where candidates are using this service to power their campaigns online. I can think of two pretty good examples:

Rep. Deb Heinrich is using DLCCWeb to run for reelection. Through her website, she is posting her news clips, organizing events, and asking for volunteers.

George Colli is running for state senate. He is writing a blog, sharing his endorsements, and distributing his press releases. Collli is also using his website to connect supporters to social networking like Facebook and YouTube.

If you see other mentions of DLCCWeb online, shoot me a line or post a comment. I really appreciate the feedback (even if it's suggestions for how to improve the service).

The guys at Wired for Change have put together a little introductory video for DLCCWeb. I'm a fan:

It occurs to me that I've never done a formal introduction of DLCCWeb. Allow me to remedy that.

As you may have figured out already from some of our previous posts, DLCCWeb is a resource that we have developed with Wired for Change that makes it easy and affordable to campaign online. Democratic legislative candidates can use it to create a professionally designed web site and access powerful online advocacy tools.

We've made it easy for individual candidates to customize and edit their own web sites no matter how comfortable they are with technology and the Internet. We provide a full selection of website templates, headers, and color schemes. Campaigns can publish a blog, set up photo gallery, or publish an issue survey with the click of a mouse. All the content can be altered online using a very simple editor tool, so no additional software or technical expertise of HTML is required.

Again, as I've said before, more than 200 of our candidates in races in 30 states are using DLCCWeb to power their campaigns.

As this election cycle unfolds, we'll have a lot more to say about this resource and the candidates who are using it.

If you have a minute, check it out, and let us know what you think.

Matt Yglesias, a blogger for The Atlantic, wrote a post today that I’ve been thinking about a lot.

He attended a presentation on new media given by Rep. Steve Harrelson, the House Majority Leader in Arkansas, at the DLC National Conversation. Harrelson writes a blog called Under the Dome, which just for the record, it is pretty incredible. Matt agrees, calling it (and other blogs like it):

[A] kind of fascinating development that potentially has a lot of promise for state and local officials who don't necessarily have big staffs.

Harrelson is not alone in writing online -- in Virginia, Dels. Kris Amundson and Bob Brink write a really good blog called 7 West; in Idaho, Rep. Nicole LeFavour writes a fantastic blog, which is authentic and honest in a way that I really love; and there are many others.

But often, these leaders are the exception and not the rule.

In his post, Matt describes how the state and local officials in the room were scared about the consequences of being involved online:

All anyone wanted to talk about was fear about what might go wrong on the internet. Could one of my kids write something on their Facebook page that embarrasses me? What if I become the victim of unfair attacks from anonymous people writing online? What about journalistic standards? Wither truth? The whole litany of internet-related fears.

I’d love to say that this is the reason that we developed the DLCCWeb. But in truth, we built it to counter a second set of problems -- making the Internet simple and affordable enough that all of our legislative candidates can build and update their own websites.

Encouraging the mentality to engage in online democracy is a different proposition. But we’re trying. Blog publishing is built right into DLCCWeb, along with volunteer tools, online fundraising, and social network integration. This cycle, several hundred candidates (with a whole range of technology comfort levels) are using the Internet in a way that they haven't before because of this service.

And we're doing our best to take the lessons of the Internet to heart in house and to practice what we preach on this blog.

I’d love to hear some feedback from the people who are reading this. Are we succeeding? What can we do better? Submit a comment or send me an email -- compton[at]dlcc.org.

Democrats won't pick up a chamber in Kansas this fall; I can almost guarantee that.

The Republicans hold a 20 seat advantage in the Senate, and a 31 seat advantage in the House. I'm not giving away any trade secrets when I say that the state isn't one of our top targets this year.

That's not stopping Kansas Democrats, however, from putting in maximum effort.

They're fielding candidates in 36 of 40 Senate districts and in 96 of 125 House districts, all with the aim of making the GOP compete for its majorities.

That's valuable for a number of reasons.

First, even in a state where voter registration favors Republicans by a 2-1 margin, the political climate has damaged the GOP brand. In Kansas, you've also got two-term Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and two Democrats in Congress who are popular and vocal leaders. Here, Democrats might have the potential to pick up some seats this year, even in districts that we don't normally have any business winning.

Second, by running so many candidates, Kansas Democrats force the GOP to spend resources protecting their incumbents that they could otherwise devote to more competitive races. Sure, the U.S. Senate race doesn't exactly seem like it's going to be a highlight (though Jim Slattery does show some life in the latest poll), and Kansas is also one of those states where Obama doesn't stand much of a chance. But competitive GOP incumbents in the statehouse can't count on monetary support from their colleagues who also have opponents. And that's a good thing.

Finally, every additional seat at the legislative table helps to change the conversation in the state. Even if we don't control a majority, we need more Democratic lawmakers talking about health care and education in Kansas. We need more Democratic incumbents developing relationships with constituents and providing leadership for the party. And importantly, even if the Democratic women and men elected this cycle never serve a day in the majority, some of them will some day become future candidates for higher elective office.

One of the things that I like best about the DLCC is our work to win majorities gradually by building infrastructure, providing resources, and training staff. Kansas is one of the states, for instance, taking advantage of our DLCCWeb program -- which provides our candidates with cheap and powerful Internet tools for campaigning.

It's also a place where we can afford to take the long view -- patiently laying groundwork for bigger wins in the future.