The netroots page has channeled $300,000 $301,972.69 $302,132.73 $309,681.22 in small donor hard money to candidates directly so far this cycle, from 3976 3997 4001 4102 4114 people.

Ned Lamont alone has more than 2000 donors from the page, and has received more than $75,000.

Every candidate on the netroots page has at least 200 donors, even the ones added today.

Every candidate on the netroots page got more than one maxed out $2100 donation in money raised by small donors.  All but four candidates got more than two.

With the exception of money going to Blogpac, which is used for open source polling, all of this money is going to Democratic challengers.  There's no incumbent defense here, this is about change.

Actblue has channeled more than $6 million since its inception two years ago.  And we noticed, Matt DeBergalis and Ben Rahn, that the servers were really smooth today.  Great job!

Update, yet again: Lamont needs seven five four two more donors to get to an even 2000. And the page is less than $2000 from a cool $300,000. We can do it.

Update again: Lamont's at 1990 donors, and the netroots page is at $297,357 with 3927 donors. Almost at 2000 donors for Lamont and $300,000 for the netroots page. Put us over the top.

Update by Matt: Ok, so this is amazing. We're up to $295,491 and 3909 contributors. Lamont alone has 1,981 donors. We may hit $300,000 this quarter. Wow. If you haven't given yet, now's the time.

We are up to $281,000 and 3,684 unique donors on the combined netroots page. Amazing! That makes $81K this week. How remarkable would it be if we passed $100K this week and passed 4,000 donors overall? Keep helping out.

Some other items of interest:

• Bob Geiger argues that Americans are more likely to be killed by lightning than see the flag burned. I don't know if that is true, but it does make a good point. Is there a rash of flag burning going around the United Sates or something? Is that why we need to outlaw it?
  
  
• Burnt Orange Report has the Texas redistricting schedule.
  
  
• Here's a great new DNC action: The Democratic Reunion.

This new radiio ad from the DCCC hits moderate Republican Heather Wilson hard, pegging her for missing votes to attend fundraisers with Bush.  Wilson is part of a band of moderate Republicans that are vulnerable this cycle because of the poor climate for Republicans.

Watch them change their voting patterns in response to the squeeze.  For instance, this corporate, excuse me, 'free' trade agreement with Oman, which passed the Senate with the help of 10 Democrats (Baucus, Cantwell, Clinton, Kerry, Landrieu, Lieberman, Nelson (FL), Nelson (NE), Obama and Salazar), is now going to the House.  It'll be interesting to see what kind of pressure the House moderates are under to vote against leadership on this.  Oman has horrifying labor standards, and has been tagged with real human trafficking (ie. slavery) charges.

Can moderates afford to vote for pacts like this anymore?  It's an interesting question.  

Dumpmike, the local blog that inspired the netroots Linda Stender endorsement, downloaded every photo from Mike Ferguson's website and found that the site is quite, um, limited.

Ferguson's TV ad has a diverse cast, but the TV footage was staged and shot by professional media consultants.  The pics from the site  are presumably shots of Ferguson on the campaign trail.  A very limited campaign trail.

Taking a look at the overall trend of George W. Bush's approval rating provided by PollKatz, it appears that the numbers have moved up slightly, though noticeably, in recent weeks. Two polls released this week, in fact -- the Hotline / Diageo poll and the LA Times / Bloomberg poll (both .pdf) -- show the President's numbers up to 41 percent.

But even as President Bush has regained some support from the American people (though much of the movement has come within the Republican Party), Bush's Republican allies in Congress continue to fair poorly in opinion polling. From the LAT/Bloomberg survey:

If the election for Congress was being held today, which party would you like to see win in your congressional district: the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?

Republican -- 35 percent
Democrat -- 49 percent

As you may know, this November all seats of the U.S. House of Representatives and a third of the seats in the United States Senate are up for election. After the election in November, would you like to see the Democrats take control of Congress, or would you like to see the Republicans continue to be in control of Congress?

Republicans keep control of congress -- 34 percent
Democrats in control -- 54 percent
Each party control one house of congress (vol.) -- 4 percent

There certainly are qualms within the blogosphere and certain segments of political scientists about the usefulness of generic congressional ballots. In past years, for instance, Republicans have been able to erase Democratic leads to maintain control of Congress.

While there certainly is a case to be made that Republicans are more likely to turn out on election day, negating even moderate Democratic leads in generic congressional ballots, at no previous point in recent memory has any party fared so well on these questions, or for so long.

Since the middle of February, only seven of 29 non-partisan polls (as recorded by Polling Report) have shown the Democrats' lead to be in the single digits, and no poll dating back to last fall (which is when the data on the site begins) shows the Republicans holding a generic congressional ballot lead. In fact, with the exception of one poll from Fabrizio, McLaughlin -- a Republican polling firm -- no poll during this entire time has shown the Democrats' lead to be below 5 percent.

The data found by the LA Times and Bloomberg, which are not dissimmilar from the numbers released by Gallup or even Pew this week, indicate that the Republicans still have their work cut out for them in the coming months -- even with the institutional biases that tend to allow the party in power to stay in power.

Now's the time to open up your wallets and give to your favorite candidate.  If you don't have a favorite, go to the Actblue netroots page, pick a few candidates, and throw some money their way.  

The filing deadline is tonight.  What candidates report out from this quarter - both in terms of number of donors and amount of money - will affect coverage in the next few days, and it will drive additional money and endorsements.  A lot of internet contributions come in during the last month of an election, but that money is hard to absorb by a campaign infrastructure.  Money now though goes to campaigns and helps them plan real GOTV operations and tailor their media buys effectively.

So if you want your money to have real political impact, now's the time.  

Oh, and in a somewhat connected question, I'm thinking of working on the politics of global warming on MyDD (not the science or how fast Greenland is melting, but the politics of the issue).  If that's a topic that you'd like to see me write about, let me know in the comments.  The reason this question is connected to the pitch for cash is because the money that comes from you through Actblue is making political actors sit up and take notice of what we have to say.  $260,000 in hard money is a lot, and that's just from the netroots page.  They know we're serious about politics, because we've put our money where our mouth is.

So anyway, if you're going to give this cycle, now's the time.  And let me know if you'd like to me to get into global warming politics.

Strategic Vision has some new numbers out from Washington state:

17. Do you approve or disapprove of Senator Patty Murray's job performance?
Approve 53%
Disapprove 33%
Undecided 14%

18. Do you approve or disapprove of Senator Maria Cantwell's job performance?
Approve 47%
Disapprove 38%
Undecided 15%

19. If the election for United States Senate were held today and the candidates were Maria Cantwell, the Democrat or Mike McGavick, the Republican, whom would you vote for?
Maria Cantwell 47%
Mike McGavick 43%
Undecided 10%

McGavick's been relying on a gentle reputation to make himself seem moderate.  It's actually a pretty standard tactic by hard right-wingers, to come off as a nice guy or gal and pretend that 'niceness' means being a moderate.  McGavick's going to face trouble, though, because of his stances against net neutrality and against Social Security (though he's being wishy washy on this one).  Cantwell has problems consolidating her base, but she's starting to make moves in that direction.

Art Brodsky has a good run-down of the politics and policy implications of what happened in the Senate Commerce Committee a few days ago.  The bill is a monster, and the chances of passage have dropped dramatically.  Net neutrality proponents are still going to fight to put strong net neutrality provisions into the bill on the Senate floor, but Stevens has made it quite clear that any real net neutrality provisions will be a poison pill.  And the House leadership has made it clear that net neutrality is not acceptable and will be stripped out in conference committee.  

We want strong net neutrality provisions.  The telcos don't.  There is no room for compromise on this point, though it's not clear to me why the telcos are sacrificing video franchising for net neutrality.  But then, it's never been clear to me why the telcos have had their PR shills out there lying to the public and smearing people who can talk back.  Live and learn, I suppose.

Oh, and Verizon's shipping this new creepy router free for its spanking new FIOS fiber service customers.  Buy Verizon, and this is what they install.  You can read about this router's deliciously awesome new features at the PR Orwellian doublespeak press release that Verizon put up talking about 'managed broadband services'.  It's quite creepy.  I got this technical evaluation of the new creepy router's properties:

The almost-proprietary customer management features of the TR-069-compliant router have the capability to provide unprecedented Verizon control of the customer's interactions with the network.  It has the capability to put all kinds of authentication protocols in between the customer and the content, apps, services, and other Internet affordances the customer may want to access.  It takes away customer control, and instead substitutes Verizon control.

That's pretty much what you need to know.  The new services being rolled out are radically different from what the internet has always been, a level playing field for everyone where users are in control.  With a non-neutral net, Verizon's in control.