THE LOOK OF OH-SIX, FROM FOURTEEN MONTHS OUT

I'm going to go with the Jawas on this and say that the look of yesterday's special congressional election in Ohio is going to be the template for most of of the 06 midterm elections. It's going to fit four out of Hobbes' five categories for life in the state of nature: solitary, poor, brutish, and nasty, while unfortunately it's going to be quite long. And the outcome is going to be about the same: a whole lot of incumbents are going to have much smaller margins of victory than in the recent past, but they'll still be margins of victory.

The midterms will come down to what they always do: candidate recruitment and issue focus. Money is becoming less of an issue thanks to the flattening of the fundraising hierarchy---this was a success for the left blogs for their ability to turn that into a real race by being able to generate actual dollars to pour into an otherwise moribund race. But, it was still a victory for the Republicans---much like Ted Kennedy's winning the 1994 senate race by a similar margin over Mitt Romney was a symbolic victory for the Republicans, but an actual victory for the Dems. Symbolic victories count only for so much, and not at all when it's time to count votes in Congress.

The big question is whether this race will change the dynamics of candidate recruitment which is wrapping up now. How many Don Quioxte's are out there willing to run a bruising race and face certain defeat, with the microscopic/theoretical chance of winning? And how many of these people stand an actual chance of not becoming eviscerated in the political arena?