The emails started after the New York Times piece came out on February 16th. Aptly titled In State Senate, Aging Fingers Cling to Power, authored by Danny Hakim, it was a fairly standard meditation on the challenges facing Joe Bruno's caucus as the blue tide washes over New York's last republican bastion.

Problem was, in an article that started with a reference to an aging state senator, Caesar Trunzo, there was no reference to Trunzo's actual, declared Democratic candidate, Jimmy Dahroug. Instead, Hakim featured an undeclared former Nixon/Bush/McCain republican who may or may not run for the seat as a Democrat.

Christopher Bodkin, an Islip Town Board member and a Democrat, is considering challenging Mr. Trunzo, who is 21 years his senior. Mr. Bodkin likened the situation with the Senate Republicans to the United States Senate: “Look at Strom Thurmond: They just kept him going and going because they needed to hang on to a slim majority.”

“I certainly won’t challenge Senator Trunzo on his age,” he said. “He’s there and going back and forth to his district and so forth. I will run on the theme that it’s absolutely time for a change.”

The last significant change in Bodkin's life was his switch from republican to Democratic affiliation.

The above-mentioned emails came from increasingly perturbed grassroots activists, reaching out to one another on the various listservs. Here's a sample quote:

In 2006, Ned Lamont showed that the grass-roots/net-roots can rid our party of "in name only" Democrats. Donna Edwards' win last week was simply the next logical step in ridding our party of phony Democrats. It is time for the New York grass-roots/net-roots to step up! We need to show the powers that be that we will not stand for phony Democrats that don't share our values and ideals. We need to show the powers that be that just because they are rich we will not stand for phony Democrats. We will not support some rich Republican who wakes up one morning and decides that he can buy us! WE ARE NOT FOR SALE!!!

My crystal ball is currently in the workshop being repaired, but the level of anger at The Powers That Be flooding my inbox doesn't bode well in an election year. A huge part of the collective self-consciousness of the netroots and grassroots is opposition to the DLC-nurtured idea that Democrats have to be as much like republicans as possible. It's not, I'd suggest, the collective belief of the netroots that crappy Republi-crats are much of a gain - we already have Carl Kruger and that raving homophobe/ anti-choice extremist Ruben Diaz, and we don't need more of them. These people need to be primaried, not have their numbers augmented. The reason people don't vote for Democrats is that they sometimes don't see the point of doing so - and no wonder, because some Democrats behave like republicans. This is not brain surgery, it's brand differentiation.

Bodkin's presumptive candidacy isn't going over too well with the activist base, that's clear. The gist of the conversation at the grasstops right now seems to be simply that, in terms of state-level engagement, fending off Dahroug's republican primary challenger will take precedence over other goals. This is very much turning into an us-versus-them moment and a bloody fight over a freaking primary. If you need an example of how it's going to play out, take a look at the fate of party-switcher and former Congressman Stephen P. Forbes.

What an awesome way to go into the 2008 election. This game plan is about as solid as the one that propelled Hillary directly into the Democratic nomination.

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