Light A Candle

Paul Wellstone died five years ago this week when his plane went down during a tough election campaign in Minnesota. Wellstone was the greatest friend the American worker ever had in the US Senate; if you watch him in action, you're astonished that this guy managed to show up in the world's greatest deliberative body, compared to who we have there now. He was unlike any politician I've ever known, and I can only imagine the hero he would have been had he lasted beyond the beginning of the Internet age.

In fact, my friend Paul Hogarth ran the initial "Draft Wellstone for President" campaign online in 2000, and says he still hears from early adopters who connected through that site. The man was just an amazing grassroots organizer and represented something so dangerous to the conservative movement that they through everything they had at him in 2002 (and after he died, concocting that disgusting, bogus story about partisanship at his funeral). Had he survived to see Election Day, he would have beat them. And I'm convinced he could have been President someday.

Democrats in the Senate put together this amazing tribute video that gives just a glimpse of Wellstone's passion, his intelligence, his charisma, and his humanity. We miss him now as much as ever.