Although Jake Metcalfe is a long-time behind-the-scenes Democrat pol and a lifelong Alaska, he's not progressive. At all. He brags about his role in helping kill the "Mobe," the progressive arm of the Alaska Dems up into the early 1970s. His allies in the party have a history of corruption almost rivaling the current GOP officeholders who are going down like ten-pins.

Late this spring, I was doing some volunteer work for the party HQ in Anchorage under the proviso that the party would give all Dem US House candidates who have filed an even playing field until the August 2008 primary is over. But no sooner than I started helping on oppo research for them on Don Young than Jake Metcalfe, who was then Chairman of the Alaska Dems, opens his big yap at a friend's house, severely dissing the only candidate to have filed at the time (about 4 weeks ago) - Diane Benson. So much for that deal.

Jake's been back in DC, at first allegedly trying to get the DCCC interested in the party, but it now appears he was trying to get an edge up on Benson, who is very progressive.

Diane Benson, who came closer to Young - over 41% of the vote - than any opponent since 1992, filed two months ago, and has started an organization. This may shape up to be a contest between an upcoming progressive and a quaky relic from the old Dem machine which sold out progressive values to try to control how the pipeline contract benefits were parceled out in the mid-70s to mid-80s. The legacy of this earlier incarnation of "The Corrupt Bastards' Club" was the regulatory laxness that led to the Exxon Valdez tragedy.

Diane Benson's, son, a trooper in the 101st Airborne, was severely injured in Baghdad in November, 2005. He was on his second tour, and would have been out of the Army then, but for the stop-loss program. Benson filed for the 2006 race when no Alaska Dem had the guts to run against Young, even though Young's corruption was even then no secret here to anybody willing to spend two or three hours getting acquainted with Young's record - as has been documented so well at TPMMuckraker and at downwithtyrrany.blogspot.com. But now that everybody is watching the wounded Young limp along, they're gathering for the kill. Opportunism like this has recently been described quite eloquently by Young himself. I look upon Metcalfe as more a member of Young's immediate mink family than as a viable step up in political integrity.

If he wins the primary, I'll support him. But Diane Benson is one of the most charismatic candidates to enter the national scene from Alaska in a while. She's a progressive version of Governor Sarah Palin. Metcalfe is more like an Arctic version of Joe Lieberman.