"There's nothin' in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos..."

As netroots Kossacks head to Las Vegas for this year's grassroots DailyKos convention, at the dKos site this diary sits atop the Top Ten: Are you going to crash the damn gate or just kick a few boards out of it?

An admonission to all readers to rethink the notion that recapturing the country for progressives means capturing Congress, blogger TXsharon profiles Texas Democratic contender for Attorney General's office, David Van O, and his 50-state populist approach. For example, on David Van O's website I found this:

It is time to discard the "avoid polarization at all costs" strategy, the "take no risks" strategy, the "appeal to everybody" strategy, and the "chase the middle" strategy. It is time to remember what Jim Hightower told us 20 years ago, "there's nothin' in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos." It is time to cease the followership strategies of scripting campaigns on the basis of what people thought yesterday in polls, and assert the leadership strategies of campaigning for what we know to be right based on our deepest convictions of what we want for tomorrow. It is time to stop worrying about whom we might offend if we speak truth to power, and start worrying about what value are our lives if we don't speak truth to power. It is time to cherish partisan Democrats and reject nonpartisan Nothingcrats. It is time to forget "right-left" analysis and install "right-wrong" analysis. It is time to replace the "liberal-conservative" spectrum with the "liberty-tyranny" spectrum. It is time to stop worrying about how to get money from big donors and start worrying about how to get more money into working people's paychecks. It is time to fight for better lives for voters instead of peddle promises to voters. It is time to treat public office as a duty, not a promotion. We must fight for the people, not in order to win their votes, but in order to win them justice.

When we Democrats as the heirs of the noblest political tradition in the world - the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, James Stephen Hogg, Ralph Yarborough, Ann Richards, and millions of unsung Democratic heroes - learn and relearn and apply these things, the people will know we are there for them and they will turn to us, because they are in need and have been in need for a long time. The more courageously and more vigorously we fight for the people against economic, cultural, and political tyranny, all the sooner will they turn to us. When that happens we will be prepared to win for the people, because we will already be thinking like winners and conducting ourselves as winners. We will dare to fight and dare to win.

Folks, just the visitor/activist-friendly design of the site makes me want to vote for Van O!

There may be a variety of ways to get Special Interest Money out of our democratic processes, but I know that at least one of them is for voters to take their vote seriously enough to get informed and stay informed about who they are electing and then holding that representative accountable. At the very least that means starting with the best candidates that money can't buy...David Van O looks like one example of that kind of candidate.

Who, and where, are the others?