Hey, I'm pretty happy with what I've seen tonight.
I think Sestak will be a strong general election candidate and I think we will hold on to the Pennsylvania seat. I kind of like the idea of sending snarlin' Arlen to the sidelines, even though he has behaved pretty well over the past year. I also like that over a million people apparently voted in the primary.
It is funny to see the MSNBC coverage of this -- Andrea Mitchell seems positively glum and both she and Chuck Todd and Howard Fineman all seem to think it somehow speaks badly for the White House and Democratic prospects in the fall. I couldn't disagree more. On the other hand, Rachel Maddow seems positively ebullient about it, I would note for what it's worth that Bill Toomey got a very small vote in the uncompetitive Republican primary.
I am also happy to see the seeming win by Jack Conway in Kentucky and his match up with Rand Paul, who absolutely crushed Mitch McConnell's boy in the Republican primary. I also really like the overall Democratic vote in the state -- nearly 450,000 votes cast in the primary versus only 330,000 in the Republican primary, I can't help but wonder if this doesn't portend far greater enthusiasm among Democrats than has thus far been thought to exist.
It's disappointing to see Blanche Lincoln ahead of Bill Halter, but it appears that they are going to have a run-off election. Halter is giving her a good race. I am uncertain how the Morrison vote will likely divide, but at a minimum Lincoln will have gotten the scare of her political life and I can't believe that that's a bad thing. Once again over 200,000 votes in the Democratic primary counted at this point (with 55% of the vote counted) versus 75,000 in the Republican primary (with the same percentage counted). So it appears that the Democrats will have nearly a quarter million more voters than the Republicans in this primary.
I'd like to see someone like Nate Silver weigh in on what this cumulative vote all means in terms of assessing intensity.
Lastly, the Democrats comfortably held on to John Murtha's seat. Now the winner, Mark Critz, is not exactly my kind of guy. But I am pretty happy to see an 8 point win in a district that McCain carried in 2008 -- the only Kerry district that Obama lost in the entire country. I can't believe that this bodes well for the Republicans and I think might expose their spring time crowing about the fall elections to be much mistaken. This may be the most significant of all of the races oddly enough. (Rachel Maddow also points out that this is the seventh straight special House election that the Democrats have now won since 2008 -- sadly, I think Hawaii is going to break that streak this Saturday due to the ego of one of the Democratic challengers.)
