Hell to Pay: We're all in

Let's take it back. We're here at the last week of the 2012 Hell to Pay campaign, and it just didn't make sense to try to figure out which Republican one of our Orange to Blue candidates is running against is the worst. Because they are all awful. And because every single one of the people Daily Kos has endorsed will make the House and the Senate better, more progressive chambers.

But let's just revisit for a moment what we're running against, from the Hell to Pay archives:

• Tommy Thompson's political director, Brian Nemoir, doing some gay-baiting in Wisconsin, when he sent out an email blast questioning Tammy Baldwin's "heartland values," featuring a video of Baldwin at a 2010 gay pride parade;
  
• Supporters of Michele Bachmann running an attack ad against Jim Graves implying he was a supporter of radical Islam;
• An entire Republican caucus hell-bent on taking away commercial-free, educational television. Slap a sponsor's sticker on Big Bird, because the thing our children most need to learn is how to be good little consumers;
• 
• Allen West sending out mailers to Florida voters detailing Patrick Murphy's supposed terrorist connections (George Soros, of course);
  
• Scott Brown holding Ted Kennedy's Senate seat; and
• The House Republicans' defense of the Defense of Marriage Act.

And that's just the worst of the worst, the "winners" in our little weekly contests. There were plenty of other nominees that could have easily made the threshold, from carpetbaggers, to global warming deniers, to WWE executives, to, well, Josh Mandel.

That's what we're fighting against, and it's great motivation. But what we're fighting for and what all of the candidates we've endorsed stand for, is pretty damned compelling too.

As a reminder, here's the questionnaire each of our candidates completed and the pledge they made to support affordable universal health care; comprehensive, humane immigration reform; protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare now and for future generations; the right for workers to organize; and tax fairness. At the state level, we're helping the organizations that are the tip of the spear for full marriage rights for every American.

These people are all working to make Congress and our country better, more progressive. Every one of these candidates will do it, and while they're doing it, they'll give the GOP hell. And we can help.

That's worth chipping in what you can, no?