Code blue in Hastert's district, part 2
Bill Kristol reads the entrails of the special election results in Illinois's 14th congressional district on Saturday. Dennis Hastert represented the district for twenty years until his retirement this past November. Democrat Bill Foster has now picked up Hastert's seat. President Bush carried the district with 55 percent of the vote against John Kerry in 2004; Hastert carried the district with 60 percent of the vote against his opponent in the difficult off-year 2006 election. Foster carried the district on Saturday with 52.5 percent of the vote. Listen up:
This Democratic pickup suggests that, for now, we’re in an electoral environment more like 2006 than 2004. Foster’s eight-percentage-point improvement on John Kerry’s 2004 performance in the district mirrors the general shift in the electorate from 2004, when Bush won and the Republicans held Congress, to 2006, when the Democrats took over Congress and ran on average about eight points ahead of the G.O.P. Most surveys have shown the Democrats retaining that sizable advantage over the last 16 months. Saturday’s special election would appear to confirm these polls.For John McCain to rectify this dire situation, Kristol cites Danton's recommendation of audacity. He suggests, for example, that McCain "could mock the narcissism of the Obama supporters, who think they’re the ones we’ve been waiting for -- by pointing out that their contemporaries serving in the armed forces are the ones making real sacrifices on our behalf." I'm afraid that the required audacity, if that is what it is, calls for an intellectual rigor that McCain has yet to display on the campaign trail.This isn’t encouraging for G.O.P. prospects in 2008.
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