We’ll have more on this as the day goes on, but all this talk of anti-incumbency and “throw the bums out” really oversimplifies what’s going on out there. It’s an easy instant analysis, especially for the time-strapped broadcast media. But particularly as it concerns last night’s results, it’s such an overbroad analysis that it’s not just meaningless, it’s actually misleading.
In almost every respect the big losers last night were national Republicans. Even in cases where the ostensible Democrat lost or suffered a setback — Specter in Pennsylvania and Lincoln in Arkansas — the Democrats emerged with a stronger or potentially stronger candidate.
More on this later, but Democrats come out of last night in about as good a shape as they could possibly have hoped for. And Republicans have to be wondering if they are up to surfing the expected 2010 wave.
David Kurtz
David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.