What Now?

As someone who has spent the greater part of the last year working for the Talent campaign, I was obviously one of those very disappointed with the outcome of Tuesday's election. Seeing some of the inside baseball stuff, I would have recommended against the heavy negatives that were run. IMHO, McCaskill's record could have been exposed without as much negative and Jim's positives could have been given a whole lot more exposure. May not have made a difference but on ther other hand...

St Charles County has taken some shots as not having produced the votes for Talent to win. I find this somewhat amusing since last time when we provided a large difference and didn't get credit for it. We delivered more votes for Talent this time than last but the vote margin was slightly less than 2002. Did St Charles County fail to deliver? I don't think so. McCaskill outperformed her '04 numbers in several places.

The other allegation is that the elimination of straight ticket voting hurt Talent in St Charles County and other Republican counties. While there will be significant analysis of the straight ticket issue, the claim that Talent was hurt by it can be easily refuted without numbers. When straight ticket voting was allowed, it was the first "punch" on the ballot. With the elimination of straight ticket, Talent/McCaskill was the first "punch". The result was the same as straight ticket voting in that race.

The Talent loss was terrible. We can take some solace in the fact that all of our legislators are returning and that Republicans in general were successful in St Charles. In fact, Republicans were successful across the state, Talent not withstanding.

The Senate Republicans retained a signficant majority and the House Republicans maintained a 21 vote lead over the dems, down just 5 from last year. If you have read the dem claims they are on their way back. While it is easy to see that Republican gains couldn't continue indefinitely, Republicans could lose if they fail to recognize that there was some dissatisfaction among the base. Republicans would be well served to step back and see what they are not doing that they should be doing to shore up the base.

What now? It appears to me that the dems have figured out how to get their people to turn out. Will '08 have the same level of "enthusiasm"? Only time will tell. But one thing is for sure, we are not in Kansas anymore.