Good morning

A very different post-election morning, to be sure.

M and I agreed that it makes for a very different experience - waking up on the morning after to find that most of the candidates and issues you supported actually won. There hasn't been a lot of that in the last twelve years or so. Even longer, if you go back to the advent of Ronald Reagan.

The national political landscape was a little too big for me to take in, but the McCaskill/Talent race and the stem cell research amendment were very much on our minds last night. With only ten percent of the returns in and something like a ten point lead, Talent and his family looked awfully satisfied behind the podium last night. The amendment was about in the same position as McCaskill, trailing by ten. "It's early yet," I told M. And we went to bed fairly early. Whatever would happen would happen.

McCaskill won. I can only imagine how this felt for her; I'd heard that this would have been her last foray into politics had she lost. Talent said all the right things in concession - his standard Mr. Nice Guy act - but as he spoke, all I could think of were the vicious character assassination ads against McCaskill run on Talent's behalf by the NRCC. It's one thing to criticize a political record; what Talent did or allowed to be done in his name was personal and flat mean. There is no comparison between the critical ads run by the McCaskill and the vitriol spewed forth from the Talent camp. For that alone, Talent well deserved to lose.

In the earlier days of McCaskill's campaign, when her financial disadvantage compared to talent was becoming clear, it was suggested to me that McCaskill's time might be better spent raising cash in the friendlier metropoli of St. Louis and Kansas City rather than campaigning in the vastness of outstate Missouri. I disagreed: McCaskill was busy laying the groundwork in areas where she knew she was weak, the traditionally conservative areas in the middle and south of the state. That early work paid off.

The stem cell contest ended for the best with the passage of Amendment 2. So much for the efforts of scientist/humanitarians Rush Limbaugh, Patricia Heaton, Jeff Suppan, and Kurt Warner. Look for opponents of the measure to try to hamstring it in the courts anyway they can, the state constitution be damned. I guess activist judges are okay with some convervatives if they're active in the "right" way.

That McCaskill and Amendment 2 succeeded by similar margins - after initially trailing in similar fashion - may make some observers think that the stem cell issue helped McCaskill. Actually, the opposite seems clear to me: Amendment 2 energized a lot of conservative voters who might otherwise have stayed in their warm homes rather than venture out to support Talent. That McCaskill overcame this is a tribute to her campaign...Rush Limbaugh not withstanding.

(Cross-posted.)