I have a mission for you - and it's not impossible.

Progressives shouldn’t just be FIGHTING the Tea Party - we should be LEARNING from them. Actually, we should be fighting them, too, but not just.

Anyhow, not, we shouldn't be learning from their bizarro economics - we shouldn't be learning from their selfish morality or their destructive idealism - but instead we should be learning from how they took control of the Republican Party and forced the entire Conservative establishment to lurch so far to the Right that they've even dumped people like David Frum.

If progressives hope to have any shot at influencing today’s Democratic Party - and kicking out the corporate Blue Dog Democrats and replacing them with real-deal progressives - then we need to get to work right now - and do exactly what the Tea Party did a year and a half ago to take power.

And it starts in our own backyards.

Let me introduce you to the Concord Project - a right-wing organization in charge of getting out the vote for Republicans.

Last year - the Concord Project expanded their get out the vote strategy beyond just traditional phone banking - canvassing - and putting up “vote Republican” signs - they decided to infiltrate local politics by encouraging Tea Partiers - conservatives - to become Precinct Committeemen.

Here’s their pitch:

What’s the most powerful political office in the world? It is not the President of the United States. It’s Precinct Committeemen.

So why is a Precinct Committeeman so important?

First, because precinct committeemen and only precinct committeemen get to elect the leaders of the political parties, if you want to elect the leadership of one of the two major political parties in this country, then you have to become a precinct committeeman.

As in - politics starts at the bottom.

It starts with Precinct Committeemen and women - people who are either appointed or win local elections with very few votes at stake - in some cases 10 or 20 votes - positions that pretty much anyone can hold - but positions that wield enormous power.

It’s Precinct Committeemen and women who elect district - county - and state Party officials and delegates, who choose primary nominees that then go on to hold elected office, and who help draft the Party's platform.

So - if far right Tea Partiers move in and take over Precinct Committeeman and women seats - then they’ll also nominate a slew of Tea Partiers to hold higher offices within the Republican Party and for primaries. That was their pitch.

And those Tea Party Republican Party primary candidates will then be winnowed down in the primary to one Tea Party Republican to run against the Democrat in the general election. That was their pitch. And it worked.

Control the primaries - and the Precinct Committeepeople do - and you control the ultimate candidate, the election, and ultimately the nation - as we saw this week when the Tea Party Republican freshmen who were elected because of this strategy blew up John Boehner's deal with Obama to raise taxes.

Here’s a video from January of 2010 - with the same Concord Project Representative encouraging the Tea Party to do exactly what I just described:

This video is for all the people out their in the tea party movement, the 9/12ers, the we surround the people, just good decent people who are really fearful of what's going on in the country and want to do something to fix things and they're not sure what to do. Well, I've got a solution for you. The best way to ensure that conservatives win that all-important primary election is to become a real ball player in the ball game of politics. And that ball game is called party politics.

And this is a secret, they don't want the party establishments, any incumbents don't want you to know about this and that's why I'm telling you about it. Only precinct committeemen get to vote for, to elect party leaders. Only precinct committeemen can vote to endorse candidates.

Again - that was in 2010 - 11 months before the elections.

In 2008 - half of the Republican Party’s Precinct Committeemen positions around the country were vacant.

But today - motivated by the efforts of people like the Concord Project - the Tea Party has swept in to fill the gaps. They've filled up the Republican party.

And we saw the results of the Precinct Committee takeover last year - with Tea Party candidates worming their way on to nearly every ballot around the country - and actually picking up 87 new seats in the US House of Representatives - and 9 new seats in the Senate.

And even though the Tea Party doesn’t control a majority within the Republican Party in Congress - they do control the Republican Party’s platform because they have the control of the Precinct Committees.

And therefore progressives need to do the same thing, only within the Democratic Party.

If we've learned one thing over the last few years - it's that the Democratic Party has shifted to the center - and its establishment is unwilling to adopt real progressive change when it comes to things like health reform - energy reform - and election reform - just to name a few.

And as we saw in the Bush tax cut debate last year - and the recent debt-limit debate - this unwillingness to stand up and fight - is leading to an endless stream of Republican victories - and the dismantling of programs that progressives fought so hard for over the entire last century.

We have been too often losing these fights - and to win them it takes more than union protests in Wisconsin - or US Uncut demonstrations on Wall Street - or activism against your Member of Congress - although those are all important.

But to really take power, like the Tea Party did in one short year, it will take an infiltration of the Democratic Party itself through claiming Precinct Committee positions.

If this year - starting NOW - we execute the exact same strategy the Tea Party did last year - then we can move the Democratic Party back to its progressive roots - and finally see the progressive reforms that we've been fighting for.

So here's your assignment, Mr. and Mrs. Phelps, should you decide to accept it.

We have 15 months before the next election - and your mission is to show up at your local Democratic Party headquarters and begin the infiltration.

As always, should you or any of your team be caught or killed, my producers Shawn, Monna, and Sam will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

This video will self-destruct in three seconds.

Good luck.

That's The Big Picture.