That's one way to look at it.

But I'd rather remember how this feels and take it out on the Republiscum next year.

We lost by at least 12%  and looks like maybe more....

We got clobbered... We should have done better... We gained one point over 2006 and that was with an established incumbent.  It is most definitely a very bad omen of things to come.

Thanks,

Mike

One more thing--Latta won't have the advantage of preferential treatment in '08. Weirauch, or whoever runs next year, will have every advantage over him except incumbency.

And while that may be a doozy, he's not going to be able to rest easy. I'm content with that.

In terms of the horse race and the expectations game, you may be right.

In terms of the overall implications, I'd take this as a sign that the Democrats cannot expect to build beyond what they accomplished in 2006 without doing more to deliver on their promises.  Not being the Republicans only gets you so far.

In the end, I'm glad we tried hard to contest this district, and I'm glad we continue Howard Dean's strategy of asking every American for their vote.  Unless I'm mistaken, this district hasn't been Democratic in 70 years, but change doesn't happen overnight.

I can only wonder how many voters this ad campaign swayed: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1 207/GOP_vs_Clinton.html

"Phil Forgit. Just like Hillary."

She's going to cost us in these and swing districts.

Any way you cut it, i don't think this is good.

Vox Populi said "She's going to cost us in these and swing districts".

Prove it. Do you have any evidence of this? All of the polling I've seen shows that she is quite competitive in the South and in plenty of swing states. There is no evidence that she would hurt us down the ticket. And I say this as a Richardson supporter.

On the flip side, if the GOP candidate is Romney or Guiliani, many evangelicals will probably stay home.

Or did they not listen to them?

they had a pretty "average" victory under the conditions (outspending us in an easily republican district).  2008 has the potential to be a blowout.  the conditions haven't seriously changed.  democrats are going to be putting money in places MUCH MUCH MUCH more ready to accept democrats than OH-05.  overall im pleased with our strategic victory, making repubs spend $430,000+ on the race.  

If the district is R+10, why did we lose by roughly 14? That's not a good sign.... either motivationally or otherwise.

Was the turnout low?

I see that in some ways this was a victory -- Robin Weirauch only lost at the same level as in 2006 and we made the Republicans spend an enormous amount.

There were a lot of factors against Robin:

* The District is very conservative. It has elected Republicans for 70 years and Bush won by 61% in 2004.

* Bob Latta's father held the District for 30 years.

* Recently, the District was gerrymandered to be particularly Republican.

* There is very little progressive media in the District.

* Bob Latta has 16 years of government experience. Robin has never been elected to a public office.

* The Republicans spent twice as much as the Democrats.

Still, I was disappointed that the race wasn't closer and that Robin didn't do any better than she did in 2006, especially given that she had a lot of people working for her, including Governor Ted Strickland, Senator Sherrod Brown, and Congressmembers Marcy Kaptur, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and Tim Ryan and that Bob Latta had just come out of a nasty primary. I wonder why she didn't do better.

I was disappointed in the DCCC ads which tried to tie Latta to convicted Republican fundraiser and scammer Tom Noe and corrupt former Governor Bob Taft. The connections were tenuous and the ad seemed like a low blow. I also didn't like the ad that mimicked the Brueher's primary ads and criticized Latta from the right for voting for tax increases. I wonder if these ads turned people off (or gave them an excuse to do nothing or vote Republican).

I wonder if Democrats didn't turn out to vote despite all our GOTV efforts.

I also wonder if there were some voting shenanigans going on. Most of these county election offices are controlled by Republicans -- did they diddle with the numbers? I wonder especially how the polls could have shown such a close race and the election results be so far apart.

It would be great if someone would do a careful postmortem on this race and see what lessons we can learn for the future.

I agree with some of the things said here and scratch my head at others, but the bottom line is that this was a Republican Republican district and you lost by the kind of margins parties lose by when they're on a roll.

Where do you get this idea that you can shwo up in these kind of districts thinking you can just take over?

Now you know how it felt to be a GOP activist in the South 40 years ago.

Your bottom line is right that this ultimately benefited us more than them.  They spent half-a-million and at least twice as much as we did just to maintain the status quo on a safe Rethug seat when they had very little available to spend in the first place, and we're flush with cash.

But all that said, the terms "head fake" and "dupe" don't apply.  The DCCC doesn't spend a quarter-million on a head fake, that's play-to-win money.  They actually thought they COULD win.  Sure they might be happy with the consolation prize of having forced the Rethugs to sweat and dump their last pocket change, but that wasn't a goal.  The goal was to win.  And no, I'm not saying that means we failed.  We didn't.  The consolation prize is real, not fiction, because the spending on the this race very likely means we hold or take a seat next year that we might not hold or take otherwise.

Are we missing one point?  The voters may be agains tBush and Iraq, but they are not blaming the Republican Party in general for the policies which are damaging this country.  It will take a recission to get them to do that.