He says to recover from his Edwards political venture, “I got under the bed in a fetal position and sucked my thumb.”

Mudcat doesn’t paint any pretty pictures of how Powell can waltz off with a congressional prize in November but he thinks it is possible. “This is a national campaign.  It can go viral,” he says.  If Mudcat has anything to do with it, it will.

Powell, a political novice like many who have gone before him– to name a few, Tom Periello, Don Beyer, Linwood Holton—offers an alternative to the legions who just plain don’t like Eric Cantor.  Mudcat believes that Powell has the two essentials for a politician that Cantor lacks: a sense of justice and belief in equality.  Those two characteristics are what every politician needs, not just to get elected, but to also serve in office.

Mudcat said he was inspired to sign on to the Powell campaign after a call from Fergie Reid, the still rabid Henrico Democrat who, like Powell, faced a tough campaign as a black candidate for the House of Delegates in 1965.  He won against enormous odds.

Warren Stewart, a school superintendent and Cantor’s opponent in his first re-election campaign, used as his inspiration the children’s book, “The Little Engine That Could.”  After only two years in DC, Cantor didn’t have much of a Congressional record to go after.  He does now.  Mudcat gleefully laid out some of the Powell plans to the Chesterfield Dems.

Favorites of Cantor are flag-waving and Constitution-quoting, Mudcat said.  However, in that department, Cantor will have a hard time matching Colonel Wayne Powell, a 30- year US Army veteran and the father of Major Sean Powell.

To learn about the Mudcat philosophy of campaigning, you can read the book he wrote with Steve Jarding, manager of Mark Warner’s successful campaign for Governor in 2001.  “Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland, and What the Democrats Must Do to Run’em Out” got good reviews.

In 2006, Mudcat used his tactics as a senior advisor to Jim Webb in his U. S. Senate Campaign.

Rolling Stone wrote, “February 2006, Webb called the Democratic political strategist, Dave Saunders, and together they plotted to end the career of Senator George Allen, a handsome dunce in the model of George W. who stood to be elected by thirty-three points.”

We know the rest of that story.  “Handsome dunce,” hmmmmmmmmmm.