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New Jersey: Democratic candidate wins in a solidly blue state
Virginia: Democratic candidate wins race on heels of a popular Democratic governor and a third candidate leaking votes from the Republican candidate
New York: Nothing to note there.

Wow thats just horrible for Republicans. But I understand when you have been getting drubbed like the Dems in recent elections, you take your comfort where you can. And Im ok with that. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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I'll agree that in a way you're right - in a vacuum, the Democratic wins aren't necessarily indicative of well...anything. However, two things:

1) President Bush makes an emergency stop in Virginia to stump for Kilgore - and Kilgore still looses. Under most circumstances, this is somewhat of a political gamble that could cost President Bush political capital, but as Charlie Cook noted in his Cook Report yesterday - what capital? To that end, Bush was owning the results from yesterday whether he showed up to stump or not (so it wasn't much of a gamble, in my mind). On my drive to work yesterday morning, I overheard Republican strategist Ed Rogers give a quote on NPR (which I may not capture perfectly but what I thought was relatively spot-on, even if I don't get it verbatim) - but it was something along the lines of "Even if Kilgore wins in Virginia, no one will claim it solves Bush's problems - but it would be the absence of bad, and when you're in trouble the absence of bad is the first step toward recovery."

2) Ergo, the big 'story' to emerge from yesterday's races is this: yesterday could have been (had Kilgore and Forrester and others pulled out victories) a lifejacket for Bush - his way of climbing out of the cellar. Yesterday's GOP losses just furthers the inter-party angst and pessimism. Yesterday could have stopped some of the snowballing GOP problems - and while not necessarily 'adding' to the problems, the election day losses were more or less a missed opportunity for recovery.