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While I'm feeling contrarian, Jerome's a bit optimistic; Hackett isn't going to be able to gear up for a Senate run in 2006. It's obscene how much money it takes to run a Senate race; most governors are even shocked at the amount of time and effort they have to spend raising money for Senate races. To give you an idea, Pennsylvania, which also has over ten million people and two large media markets, one of which bleeds into other states. Each side will spend upwards of $50 to $100 million in the race, between candidates, parties, Senatorial Committees, and independent expenditures. Hackett would literally have to increase his fundraising by 100 fold, which is quite a tall task. He'd have to start now, he'd have to abandon his commitments to Iraq, it would put incredible strain on his family ... it is just not the sort of thing you can do on a whim.

Paul Hackett just took a district that went 64-36 for Bush and pulled to within 51.6-48.4. Granted, he had a huge number of factors working in his favor: Bush's job approval in the district isn't terribly high; the GOP machine that dominates state government is historically unpopular; his opponent was something of an empty shirt; and he got a wave of money that no one was expecting; and low turnout tends to favor the opposition party in special elections; because they're a bit more juiced to go for the win. But Hackett had to do a lot of things right, he portrayed himself as a "get government out of my bedroom and my gun case" libertarian, a left-leaning PAC funneled money to a front group that criticized Schmidt from the right, he went negative in a way that didn't make him the victim of being the negative campaigner, by focusing on the facts of Schmidt's association with the Ohio Republican machine, and emperically he ran a great ground game.

Contrary to a lot of folks out there, I think the Cook political report was pretty close to spot on. Half of Hackett's improvement is probably attributable a combination of Hackett the candidate and the special election, and the other half is attributable to statewide or nationwide disatisfaction with Republican governance. Districts where Republicans normally win with over 60% of the vote will take a very strong candidate to become competitive -- someone with a great biography, a party switcher, someone with serious bank, or an extremely well known city or county father. But districts that went 56-44 now may be neck-and neck, and districts that went 58-42 are on the margins of being competitive. That's huge, and at least doubles the number of potential competitive districts in 2006.

Make no mistake about it, though, this shows that Democrats can win anywhere. Consider throwing some loose change to the DNC or D-Trip.

Believe Now Playing: Liz Phair / Liz Phair / It's Sweet

Believe
Now Playing: Liz Phair / Liz Phair / It's Sweet