Yesterday's Big Vote

The real news wasn't West Virginia, but Mississippi, where for the third time in a row a Democrat captured what had been considered a safe Republican seat in a special Congressional election. "There's a lot of people that are mad at Bush," said Jim Jennings, a local Republican, quoted in the New York Times. Indeed. The roughly 80% of the country who feel things are on the wrong track and who have negative views of Bush seem to be transferring — as they should — their views to the Republican party generally. If you think about it, to be even remotely accurate the survey numbers require that a large proportion of traditional Republicans are dismayed with what their party has become: if they haven't yet gone over en masse to the Democrats it's from residual skepticism that the Democrats are capable of organizing a bake sale, if that. In a more significant sense than usual, then, a smoothly functioning convention in Denver becomes an important marker.