Greetings from Jonesboro, Arkansas. Its humid but not as hot and usual for June. There's a Barns and Noble open in the new Jonesboro mall, which makes me think I made some mistakes in life. My parents don't have Internet in their home (my Dad didn't have electricity when he was a boy), so I am blogging from the Public library. I won an IPod shuffle the other day, and Dad was suitably amazed. Its the size of a Bic lighter, and holds 120 songs. It is astounding to reflect on how much technological change he seen in his 80 plus years.
I note the good news already noted on SDP: Zarqawi killed, Francine Busby (the would-be Stephanie Herseth of California's 50th Congressional District) defeated. Jay Cost has a fine analysis of this at Real Clear Politics.
The evidence is that demographics, candidate quality, campaign spending, and district partisanship are the main determinants of special elections; national forces have not historically been factors. This, however, does not mean that Tuesday's results do not have discernible national implications. One thing we do know: historically speaking, special elections tend to be determined in the same way that open seat elections are determined. The similarities are not perfect (presidential job approval plays some role in open seats), but a model that predicts open seat elections would be very robust when predicting special elections.
In this way, then, I think CA 50 provides us with some clues to a subset of the contests in November's midterm. These are the other conservative-leaning open seats - specifically MN 06 and WI 08. Among the aforementioned variables, the Republicans are either as well or better positioned in both districts as they were in CA 50. Thus, the fact that Bilbray was able to hold on in a district like CA 50 is, I think, an indication that the GOP will likely retain MN 06 and WI 08.
Take that piece of cool analysis, and chase it with this, by Virginia Buckingham in the Boston Herald:
Stop measuring for drapes, Nancy.
If Democrats can’t win a special election for a seat left open by the guilty plea of a senior Republican congressman for bribery in a political environment that can politely be described as more sour than milk left on the counter for a week, how can they expect to win back control of the House of Representatives, handing the speakership to Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)?
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