Christine O'Donnell: Democratic Fundraising Pitch

A big part of the Democrats' unified party message going into the midterms is this: Republicans have managed to elect candidates who live on the fringes of sanity and normalcy, and they want to come to Washington and do crazy things to the country. That's perhaps a slight exaggeration of the way Democrats are posing things, but only a slight one.

To forward that model of the Republican Party, the Democratic National Committee picked out Delaware Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell today to ask its membership base for money. This from an e-mail that went out to DNC supporters from Delaware native David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager who now works with the DNC and Organizing for America:

You want a perfect illustration of this choice? Just look at my home state of Delaware, where Sarah Palin's pick for the Senate seat, Christine O'Donnell, beat a center-right Republican, Mike Castle, in the primary and suddenly changed the landscape in that race.

Every day we learn more about Christine O'Donnell's record. There's a reason why the Delaware Republican Party chair said she was "not a viable candidate for any office" in the state.

This is a nominee who is so clearly out of the mainstream that she isn't just an opponent of health reform -- she even helped spread the "death panels" smear as recently as a few weeks ago.

Even Karl Rove questioned whether someone with her extreme views could be elected.

But Christine O'Donnell is just one in this new batch of extreme Republican candidates. The Republican Party has set its sights set on taking over Congress -- and that means pulling out all the stops to elect these folks. If they do, people like Christine O'Donnell will be empowered to do the things they've been promising on the campaign trail.

The vision they have for America is very different from yours and mine.