A ray of sunshine

With the increasingly bitter Democratic primary grinding on, it's easy to get discouraged. It's important not to lose sight of the fact that we have a lot of momentum on our side this time. There are lot of disaffected Republicans right now; there's a nearly 20-point gap between those who identify as Republican and those who identify as Democrats, while they were evenly split in 2002.

A recent example of this phenomenon was the special election in Mississippi to fill Roger Wicker's old seat. It's not over yet (there's going to be a runoff) but it looks like a Democrat may take what was supposed to be a safe Republican seat. This story has been almost lost in the coverage of the Pennsylvania primary. The Votemaster over at Electoral Vote describes it well:

MS-01 is an R+10 district the Republicans have held for a decade, so it should have been a cakewalk. Only it wasn't. Despite the NRCC pouring $300,000 into the race, Democrat Travis Childers got 49.6% of the vote to Republican Greg Davis' 46.3%. Travis fell 410 votes under 50% so there will be a runoff May 13. Nobody thought the NRCC was going to pour money into such a strong Republican district and then lose. Undoubtedly both the DCCC and NRCC are going to be spending like drunken sailors for the next three weeks.