The Coming Republican Dissolution

The MS-01 pickup is truly a game-changer, and bodes extremely well for the fall. I don't know if the additional Democrats mobilized by a competitive Presidential primary in Mississippi in March played a factor or not, but this was a 62% district for Bush, and we didn't just win, but we won by 8 points. With high turnout for a special election - over 100,000 voters. November looks very strong, as Kos diarist dweb8321 points out with 26 supporting reasons, many of which I've noted here in the past (McCain still hasn't polled above 45% nationally, he can't break 75% in these primaries when he's not running against anyone, Bob Barr, etc.)

Now, the Republicans made a big mistake by trying to run against Barack Obama in this seat instead of Travis Childers, something I think they'll alter for the fall unless they are stupider than I thought. Tom Cole of the NRCC basically sounded the alarm last night.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, sounded an alarm for all GOP candidates "to take stock of their campaigns and position themselves for challenging campaigns this fall" while lashing themselves to the presidential candidacy of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

"The political environment is such that voters remain pessimistic about the direction of the country and the Republican Party in general. . . . Time is short," Cole said in a statement.

House leaders like John Boehner are already trying to co-opt Obama's "change" message for Republicans - which shows you how appealing McCain's message of less jobs and more wars is. Trying to ride the coattails of the opposition party's President doesn't seem to me like a winning strategy, either, but I'm not going to spend too much time trying to help the GOP out with one. "Don't call yourself Republicans and/or impeach Bush" spring to mind. Oh, and change your leadership - that's change you deserve!

Will the election of Travis Childers, and self-described "conservative Democrats," have a positive effect on progressive policy? First, Childers got himself elected on getting out of Iraq, fully funding education and "taking care of his mother" who has breast cancer. Those aren't incompatible issues with mainstream Democratic issues. In addition, the House is almost totally a majoritarian body. Nancy Pelosi has kept her caucus almost 90% of the time because she brings up for vote those bills that can hold the caucus. The more Congresscritters in the caucus, the more confidence she can have to hold the votes. So it doesn't matter exactly what Travis Childers supports, but what Pelosi can get away with. I'd like to see her try and get away with more, but with the Emanuel/Hoyer faction acting as saboteurs that's not going to happen.

But the other thing is that politicians move with their electorate. By electing progressives in the House - which we have a legitimate chance to do in November - the caucus will move to the left, particularly on economic grounds (both Childers and Don Cazayoux have strains of economic populism). And as the country goes center-left, politicians will strive to keep up.

MS-01: Will Democrats Pull Off Another Special Election? UPDATE: YES

Swing State Project is following the special election in Mississippi tonight, and so far with a third of the vote in, Democrat Travis Childers is leading by 10 points over Greg Davis. Childers is apparently outperforming his results in the last round of voting thus far, and he actually won that one by 49%-46%, so we could see history in the making.

(UPDATE: now it's 6 points. The Clarion-Ledger has the most updated numbers.)

The only news that came out of this today was that Davis apparently supported putting up a statue of Confederate leader and KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest in his hometown, which he denied, but which contemporary news accounts show to be true. But in truth that didn't affect anything today. This seat, won by Bush with 62% of the vote in 2004, is so close right now because Republicans are poison in this day and age.

UPDATE II: About halfway through, and Childers is up by 8 points and 3,500 votes. There are a lot of Davis-friendly precincts out, so I can't say Childers has this yet. But it's looking good.

Have to head out, I'll update this later.

UPDATE III: We did it. Once again, Republicans in a deep red seat went all-out to win, through everything they had at the Democrat, tried to tie him to Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama and all the rest, and they... lost. And lost significantly, by 8 points in an R+10 district.

Repeat it with me, Republicans are poison.

Swing State Project has a funny "draft the NRCC press release" contest on this one. They did better than the actual one. Tom Cole has finally figured out that Republicans are poison, and he doesn't even try to spin these results.

Amazing.

UPDATE IV: Turns out Scott Kleeb won his Nebraska Senate primary too. What a great night all around.

Republicans Losing All Hope Update

Yes, you're going to see a thumpin' provided by Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama in West Virginia today. But there are some other notable elections being held across the country today, including one that could really send Republicans into a tailspin.

In Nebraska, the Senate primary to replace the seat held by Chuck Hagel features a Democratic contest between former Republican Tony Raimondo and netroots hero Scott Kleeb. Here's Kleeb's closing ad, which has a whiff of Obama's message to it:



Jane Fleming Kleeb, the candidate's wife, is posting all day from her MTV blog about the race. Kleeb is a strong candidate and a nice guy who could actually make Nebraska competitive. At the least he should beat self-funding Republican in sheep's clothing Tony Raimondo.

But the big race is in Mississippi, where Democrat Travis Childers may end up beating Republican Greg Davis in a special election. This is a very Republican seat, and a loss here would really signal the disgust with which the entire country sees the GOP. The country is nearly united in its belief that the country is seriously on the wrong track, and Republicans are very late to the game in recognizing this. Indeed, even while they are desperately trying to rebrand the party as offering "change you deserve" (is that a threat?), a slogan that's actually already used for an antidepressant, the Republicans are trying to win in Mississippi by using the same old tired techniques of demonization.

Hoping to hang on to a Congressional seat in a tight special election here on Tuesday, Republicans in this mostly white and very conservative district are trying to make the vote more a referendum on Senator Barack Obama than on the candidates themselves.

In advertisements and speeches, Republicans have repeatedly associated Travis Childers, the white Democrat threatening to take the seat away from the Republican Party, with Mr. Obama. Republicans say Mr. Obama’s liberal values are out of place in the district. But for many Democratic veterans here, the tactic is a throwback to the old and unwelcome politics of race, a standby in Mississippi campaigning.

Former Gov. William Winter, a Democrat, expressed shock at the current campaign.

“I am appalled that this blatant appeal to racial prejudice is still being employed,” said Mr. Winter, who lost the 1967 governor’s race after his segregationist opponent circulated handbills showing blacks listening to one of his speeches. Mr. Winter went on to win the governor’s office 12 years later.

The new branding is just a cover for this conduct, which is way too explicit. Republicans have no ideas to move the country and simply want to tell voters the horrors of what the Democrats would present. I'm convinced that's not a victory strategy given what we face in this country right now, and we'll see if I'm right tonight in MS-01.

(The other part of that WaPo poll shows Obama up 51-44 over McCain, and this is right at the beginning of him actually campaigning in the general election. 44 is the high-water mark for McCain, in my view - he hasn't gotten very far past it in any national poll.)