Oh, Allen West. Give it up, already. It's pathetic when you go to court to get a recount and the recount shows you lost by more votes than the first count did, though it does speak to the issues we've got surrounding accuracy in vote tabulation.

Via The Politico:

Florida Rep. Allen West’s reelection prospects grew dimmer Sunday, as a recount of early ballots showed him falling further behind his Democratic opponent.

Democrat Patrick Murphy, a 29-year-old construction company executive, gained 242 votes after the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections completed its re-tabulation, increasing his lead to more than 2,100 votes over West, a tea party hero. Murphy’s lead is just outside the 0.5 percent margin that would trigger an automatic district-wide recount under Florida law.

[...]

Tim Edson, West’s campaign manager, said the advisers would be spending the coming hours assessing the vote totals. He did not specify whether the congressman had any plans to concede. Advisers said it was unlikely any decision would come Sunday.

“We’re going to take a look at where things stand,” Edson said. “If we believe the results are fair and accurate, we’re going to decide how to move forward. That decision has not been made.”

Let me help you all. When you were losing by 1,900 votes and now you're losing by 2,100 votes, give or take a few, you have nowhere to go but concession.

I'm sure Fox News will hire former Rep. West as a commentator, but first he has to accept reality. You lost, dude. Step down and let the Democrat take his seat now.

For those of you who follow LGBT politics, you'll know there's a lot of what some call "infighting". Infighting over tactics, messaging, how much Obama should be supported vs. criticized, and the like. It can get distracting and sometimes very personal.

A few weeks ago, myself, along with Joe Sudbay over at AMERICABlog and Rick Jacobs at the Courage Campaign, were chatting about all this. We agreed that (a) while debate over tactics etc. can be healthy, the division can threaten to undermine votes for LGBT equality coming up on Election Day (b) Despite the headlines, this community is more united than divided. There are a lot of voices in the pro-equality chorus, and like brothers and sisters in a family, we all sing in our own unique way. But when push comes to shove, we are always singing the same song.

So we decided to ask some of the bigger names in all these headlines if they would set their differences aside and come together on a common cause: that cause being re-electing Rep. Patrick Murphy, who led the fight to pass repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the House.

Murphy, who stormed back from being down double digits in the polls to being up 46-43 in yesterday's The Hill poll, is in a tough fight in an economically depressed district. DC Conventional Wisdom told him to stop working on that gay stuff and focus on jobs, jobs, jobs. Needless to say, he ignored them, worked side by side with those of us in the LGBT and allied community (online AND offline), whipped the votes, went on Maddow and anywhere else he could find to talk loud and proud about how important this cause is to him- a straight veteran- and got it done. He kept his promise.

So with the help of Dan Manatt at ManattMedia.com, we produced this video to send that message: that we're coming together to get Patrick's back because he got ours. Everyone was so excited that they recorded it right where they are, day of- wherever they could.

Please share the video widely, and chip in- whether you're LGBT or a straight ally- to re-elect a pro-equality, fighting Dem.

Cross-posted on OpenLeft.com, where you can also check out our live chat transcript from this afternoon with Rep. Murphy.