Wow

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I think Travis Childers (D) is going to defeat Greg Davis (R) in MS-01. At the moment, Childers leads 54-46. Ballots have yet to be counted in Davis' home county of DeSoto, but also in Childers' home county of Prentiss. On balance, the other remaining counties favor Childers over Davis. I don't think there are enough votes for Davis to pull ahead.

To put it mildly, this is shocking. Dems have no business making this district competitive, let alone winning. We now need to consider the possibility that any open seat is in play, and that incumbents who don't have some sort of specific popularity can still lose, even in favorable terrain for Republicans. There's a potential for a 1932-style realignment here.

Comments

[low-tech cyclist]

With 2/3 of precincts reporting, Childers is still up by 3,000. Things are looking good.

And you're right - if the Dems can pick this one off, no open seat is safe, and a lot of undistinguished GOP incumbents are in danger as well. (I'm thinking Dole and Cornyn in the Senate, in particular.)

Earlier this cycle, I just kind of assumed we couldn't have two Congressional elections like 2006, back to back. If Childers wins tonight, I'm gonna have to rethink that.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

It's happened before. 1978-80, 1930-32, maybe 1950-52 ... I'd have to go look.

[ikl]

It is 27% African-American or something like that. So Childers doesn't have to get that many white folks to vote for him. Bet that he is happy to have Obama on the ticket for the fall even though he can't say so publicly. The Republicans might be better running a good ol' boy from NE MI in that district, not someone like Davis from suburban Memphis (DeSoto County). Childers is cleaning up almost everywhere else.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

Getting 31% of the white vote is unusual in Mississippi for a Democrat; they average 18% statewide at the national level, and most of those are in Gene Taylor's district.

The important thing is that Davis didn't really have the negatives of Woody Jenkins or Jim Oberweis. He was pretty much a generic Republican.

[Corvus9]

"Have no business" is right. Really people, we need to ditch this 50 state strategy. I mean, it was fun and all, but this is just getting ridiculous. It's almost like no republicans can win. What, are we going to have like a 400 member Democratic caucus, or something?

Better to just give up, I say. All this success is unseemly. Whose with me?

[ikl]

I suspect that there are still lots of white Democrats in MS-1. They just vote Republican for President (and sometimes for state offices). Part of the district is sort of at the edge of Appalachia by some accounts. Clinton won that district in the primary. I'll be that is the district with the highest percentage of African-Americans that she won in the whole country.

[Stephen]

In terms of perception, all Democrats are change candidates this year, all Republicans are status quo, no matter how individual candidates try to position themselves.

McCain, for example, should be happy that Effexor already trademarked "Change you deserve." When it's an antidepressant telling you that, it's affirming your essential worth. When it's the GOP telling America that, it's taken as an insult. "Whaddya mean we deserve you?"

The result in MS is extremely encouraging, because it's one more small bit of evidence for the idea that maybe Americans are choosing candidates this year based upon non-Villager-approved criteria.

[low-tech cyclist]

It's happened before. 1978-80, 1930-32, maybe 1950-52 ... I'd have to go look.

If McCain should win (with a lot of help from the MSM papering over his policies, and focusing in like lasers on every one of Obama's flaws), it would almost surely be three in a row, Congressionally.

If the country's where I'd expect it to be in 2010 after another two years of a Republican in the White House and 41 GOP Senators blocking everything constructive the Dems tried to do, 2010 would make 2006 look trivial by comparison.