Republicans who comfort themselves with the mantra that the 2006 Big Blue Wave was a hundred-year flood that will have no impact on 2008 congressional races… avert your eyes! Because the Democrats have picked up yet another seat in yet another blood red district.
Louisiana Sixth CD (99% Reporting)
Don Cazayoux (D): 49% (49312)
Woody Jenkins (R): 46% (46282)
To put this in perspective, this is a seat the Republicans have held since 1974, in a district President Bush won in 2004 with 59% of the vote, and this special election victory comes on the heels of Democrat Bill Fosters’ win in IL-14 in former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s old seat. If Democrats are competitive in these districts, they’re competitive almost everywhere.
And for those who delude themselves into thinking Barack Obama is a liability for down-ticket Democrats, like the brilliant GOP strategists who bombarded Louisiana airwaves with ads tying Cazayoux to Obama and Nancy Pelosi, chew on this:
The attacks linking Cazayoux to Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama didn’t work. They simply didn’t. Yes, the Republicans pulled in more votes and a greater share of the vote than they did last month in the first round of balloting. So what. This is a very Republican district and yet despite of this lean and the fact that the GOP tried to make this election about Jeremiah Wright, they still lost.
This race was very much put forward by the chattering class as a referendum on Obama’s coattails (which proved to be strong in the very Republican-leaning Illinois 14th congressional district earlier this year), and Obama’s coattails passed the challenge. Simply put, the Republicans may have thought they had found a silver bullet in Obama and Wright (and Pelosi, too, for that matter), but they didn’t.
Sure, November is still a long way off. But right now I don’t see any good news for Republicans.