West Virginia For Clinton / Democrats Win House Election in MS

Well, the results are in from West Virginia and it's another race that went as expected, with a strong Clinton victory (aided largely, no doubt, by voters like this). This AP report sums it up: "Hillary Rodham Clinton coasted to a large but largely symbolic victory in working-class West Virginia on Tuesday, handing Barack Obama one of the worst defeats of the campaign yet scarcely slowing his march toward the Democratic presidential nomination."

"This race isn't over yet," she said. "Neither of us has the total delegates it takes to win." Fair enough, but unless she is planning to win like, 150% of the remaining delegates, this is starting to have a Huckabee feel to it. Fortunately, all that remains is Kentucky and Oregon next Tuesday, Puerto Rico on June 1, and Montana and South Dakota on June 3rd. So the end is in sight.

But the more interesting news tonight may be what went down in Mississippi tonight.

Democrat Travis Childers won a special House election there by a sizeable margin (this is a Republican district that Bush won 62% to 37% in 2004). Since the 2006 midterm elections, the Democrats have won every special House race.

Last week, I wrote two entries on the GOP's attack strategy against Democrats, and how it is failing (the latter post focusing specially on the ads the GOP was running against Childers in Mississippi). They ran ads calling these candidates dirty liberals and attempting to tie them to that monster Barack Obama... and they got their asses kicked by pissed-off voters who are fed up and electorally motivated after eight years of Republican misgovernance. Throwing up scary pictures of Obama and Speaker Pelosi aren't going to make that go away.

Victory in November is not a guarantee. And John McCain sells their snake oil like few Republicans can. But the usual attacks don't work anymore, and that is something to be encouraged by. This is a fight we can win.