Taking it in the teeth

The Democratic Party, for all of the caterwauling about the primary dustups and the like, is on a major roll. Yesterday, the good guys won a special election in Mississippi’s 1st District, a place that Bush carried with 62% in 2004. More importantly, the Democrat, Travis Childers, won by 8 points marking the third such win in a row. But the two most significant items to draw from this latest defeat for the GOP; the Party’s reputation among their core voters is shot to hell and its strategy of nationalizing these elections by tying candidates to Obama, Pelosi, et al. has failed miserably. November is shaping up nicely.

Merle Black, a Southern politics expert at Emory University, called a Democratic victory potentially “a huge upset, and an indication of a terrible year ahead for the Republicans.” He added, “In theory, this should be an easy win for them.”

Mimicking a strategy that proved successful in 2006, Democrats ran staunch conservatives in both this and the Louisiana race, forcing their Republican opponents to attack national party figures as surrogates.

Mr. Davis had been hoping for a large turnout in his home of DeSoto County, where roughly 15 percent of the district’s voters live, and which is solidly Republican and mostly white. But a last-minute appearance for him by Mr. Cheney on Monday apparently failed to rally his base sufficiently; indeed a modest room at a local convention center was hardly packed.

“There are indications that the normal Republican turnout is just not there,” Mr. Black said. “If they can’t win up there, where are you going to win?"

Now that is a great question. An unmotivated base, an unpopular administration, the twin shadows of Iraq and ever increasing food/energy prices; people are pissed and the same old bullshit is not going to fly this time around, even in the reddest of districts. Just pointing at the oppostition and screaming “LIBERAL” is not going to work anymore. Things look so bad for the GOP that Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) proffered,

“Voters remain pessimistic about the direction of the country and the Republican Party in general. Republicans must undertake bold efforts to define a forward-looking agenda that offers the kind of positive change voters are looking for.”

Translation: Oh boy. Unless we come up with something quick, we are so very screwed. To which I say Mazal Tov losers – you make your bed, that’s where you lay.