Red to Blue taps Joe Garcia, Raul Martinez

The news is out on Swing State Project: Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia have made the list of candidates-to-back by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Read it here.

Now, what does this mean? They will raise more money to continue waging strong campaigns against the Diaz-Balart brothers, Lincoln in FL-21 and Mario in FL-25, facing Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia, respectively.

And once again it will put the spotlight on U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) and Kendrick Meek (FL-17) as to whether they will get wholeheartedly on the team and campaign for their fellow Democrats. (If you don't know the background on this, pop back to some of the posts starting in March on this blog and read up.)

This Red-to-Blue development was entirely predictable when this all started, so I'm wondering still why the Democratic incumbents were so categorical in their refusals to be on the team.

I also suspect that Garcia and Martinez are doing well partly because Barack Obama is doing better and better in Florida -- the coattail effect already showing up. See this morning that Obama is leading McCain in Florida in a fresh Quinnipiac poll -- and that was probably taken before McCain started talking about drilling for oil spills off Florida's coast.

With strong support from women, blacks and younger voters, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the apparent Democratic presidential contender, leads Arizona Sen. John McCain, expected to be the Republican candidate, among likely voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to simultaneous Quinnipiac University Swing State polls released today.

This is against all received wise opinion a few months ago. Open your minds, folks.

Now we have to keep working to get Annette Taddeo (FL-18) on the Red to Blue list and take out my congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.