Talk About Hedging Your Bets…

…in Cincinnati, Ohio. If the Democratic candidate had a strong showing, it would send a signal to the GOP. If the Democratic candidate won, it would…um…send a signal to the…oh, you get the picture. So, what happened. The short of it? He lost anyway, by 4 percentage points or 3500 votes out of a little over 112,000. Judging by this MSNBCdotcom article, you’d be forgiven for getting confused about who’d won, as Ms. Schmidt’s name (oh yeah, she won) gets mentioned six times, while Mr. Hackett’s is noted equally, albeit in paragraph form, including a handsome recitation of his Iraq war service (a Marine, bless his heart), his feisty anti-Bush rhetoric, along with a bold paragraph headline quoting him calling Mr. Bush a ‘chicken hawk’. Snappy, that.
Now, the Democratic party line:

Democrats had viewed the race as a bellwether for 2006, saying even a strong showing by Hackett in such a heavily GOP district would be a good sign for them in the midterm elections.

…rings a bit thin with me. They should have royally kicked some GOP bootie, viewed through the MSM prism of a wounded duck president who can’t bump his approval numbers above 45%, coupled with a supposedly hugely unpopular war and a struggling economy. I mean, we’ve all seen it on the news, right? Oh, and add John Bolton, Judge Roberts, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, the shuttle, blah, blah, blah, Karl Rove and the president’s own good health. (Oh! And the Boy Scouts.) If there was ever a party primed for a thrashing by it’s own missteps, by George W., it’s the Republicans. Stick a fork in them, they’re done.
But in spite of that, little Miss Republican Schmidt wins the thing anyway?
To quote Buffy St. Marie; “Little wheel spin and spin, and the big wheel turn ’round, ’round…”
Let’s see what Dr. Dean has to say. I’ll bet he mouths ‘mandate’ for five, Alex.

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