Are you tired?  I know I am.

Are you burned out yet? I think I am close.

Are you going to quit? You damn well better not! I know I won’t! And most importantly I know Roxanne and Chet and Dave and Bruce and Leonard and Matt Campbell and Bill Maske and Michael Mauro and Tom Miller and Francis Thicke and Jon Murphy will not quit.

And all the Democratic state senate and state representative candidates will not quit. And those running for county courthouse positions will not quit.

We only have a month to go. Voters have not really seemed to have become engaged as yet. As one candidate told me, they don’t care until the baseball playoffs start. I think that is more true this year than it has ever been. So now is the time to take on a little more energy and hit it harder.

It is much like we are going into our own playoffs starting now. Republicans claim that they will be the beneficiary of a “throw the bums out” cycle.

But I know a secret that they don’t. Voters like Republicans much less than Democrats. And when it comes to issues such as health care, jobs, education, the environment and on down the line voters side with us usually with a 55% majority or better.

So why would this be such a tough election? Two simple things: Media ownership and corporate money.

Fox “News” is a 24X7X365 Republican organ. Gee, I wonder how much that is in dollars of free advertisement?  If they were the only one we could battle it, but they are just the loudest and most obnoxious. Rather than list television media that is sympathetic to right wing causes, it is much easier to list television that is liberal: 3 shows on MSNBC and FreeSpeechTV and LinkTV – the last two of which most have never even heard of.

Radio has been estimated as 90% right wing leaning. No argument here. Framing and language in a story can often create a picture in a listener’s mind that then becomes the prism through which other stories are viewed. The AP, CNN and even NPR often use the language that Fox News has made the common terms for many issues.

But here is the beauty. Despite being nearly frozen out of television and radio, we still win on issues. If TV and radio ever approached anything resembling balance, I would like to think it would kill the Republicans.

And the money in campaigns is certainly going to favor Republicans this year, especially after Republicans killed the DISCLOSE Act that was meant to fix the second worst Supreme Court decision ever. But I firmly believe that especially in Iowa the smell of all that money will actually create a stench that Republicans won’t be able to shake.

So get a good night’s rest. And then tomorrow think of what is at stake – things like keeping Republican hands off our treasury, keeping public schools open and Social Security and Medicare alive, bringing jobs back home from overseas, making sure the recovery continues and sustains. You know what I am saying.

Republicans damn near destroyed this country just a couple of years ago, we owe it to our friends, neighbors, children, grandchildren and even more, future generations to not let Republicans back in power to finish what they started.