This last weekend, Democrats picked up another seat in Congress. It wasn't just any seat, it was Dennis Hastert's formerly "safe Republican" seat. The win was solid, with Democrat Bill Foster winning 53% of the vote. This was a major blow to the Republican Party.

Salon.com reports that "National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Karen Hanretty [said] in a statement that 'one election in one state does not prove a trend.'"

This is typical Republican blindness, pretending that data points are isolated incidents without looking at the broad picture. Republicans do this with global warming as well, ignoring decades of solid scientific data and pretending that a single cold season somehow is more important than those decades of data showing a clear trend.

I have news for Hanretty: this IS a trend.

Indicted Tom DeLay's old, "safe Republican" seat in Texas has been taken by a Democrat. Pedophile Mark Foley's old, "safe Republican" seat has been taken by a Democrat. The governorship of Kentucky, once "safe Republican" has been taken by a Democrat. The governorships of Montana and Virginia have been taken by Democrats. State legislatures around the nation have been flipping to Democrat like crazy starting in 2005. And, of course, Democrats overwhelmingly took the House and marginally took the Senate in 2006. Fundraising by Democrats is at record highs. Fundraising by Republicans is at record lows. Almost each and every special election that has been held for a Congressional seat since 2005 has flipped from Repub to Dem. Republicans are retiring or flipping parties at record numbers. It started in 2005, and this trend started when Americans saw the true cost of greedy Republican mismanagement when hurricane Katrina hit.

Earth to Republican Party: This is a trend and if you don't face up to that trend it could be the death of the Republican Party. But the Republican leadership remains so blind to this American trend that even as no single state shows a majority of people approving of Bush, the candidate they choose to put up for President is John McCain, someone who offers American nothing but another four years of failed Bush policies.

Democrats are offering a true alternative to Republican corruption, recessions, mismanagement and failure, in many cases. There are still corporate Democrats, and even a handful of corrupt Democrats, but overwhelmingly, the corruption in government comes from the Republican side of the aisle. Democrats that are getting elected in solidly Republican districts are people like a local sheriff in Indiana elected to Congress, a farmer in upstate New York elected to the State Senate, a physicist elected to Congress in Illinois, and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans elected to Congress across the country. Democrats are also increasingly being funded by a whole mess of small, individual donations rather than big money. Here is where Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama might differ the most. Not on policy, but on where their campaigns get their funding. Hillary tops the list for corporate donations, even beating the Republican candidates. Barack Obama relies primarily on smaller donations. And those small donations are adding up across the board. I recently saw a statistic on Current TV that the top corporate donor in America today is ActBlue. ActBlue is the site through which a great deal of these small donations are going through, so it really isn't a corporate donation, it is a whole bunch of average folks making small donations. And that whole bunch of average folks are collectively beating out the large corporate donors.

Grassroots organizations like Progressive Majority, Wellstone Action and Democracy for America increasingly are the way new candidates get recruited, traind and organized. Progressive Majority is among the most successful of these new organizations, with a 50% success rate running almost strictly grassroots campaigns with few large donors.

This is really a part of a trend where Republican greed and corruption are being soundly, and reasonably rejected by the American people, while the Democrats are increasingly running sheriffs, veterans, truck drivers, farmers, and scientists backed by small donors with grassroots campaigns.

Wake up Republican Party: this IS a trend and you are losing because you are too blind to see it. America is sick of the Bush/Gingrich/McCain Republican Party of greed, deficits, recessions and corruption. Face up to it or keep on losing.