Want to read a hilarious, pro-McDaniel thread on the MS-Runoff result?

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And this is why Republicans lost Senate races in Colorado, Nevada, Indiana, Missouri, and Delaware.

To reiterate, the Senate could be 50-50 right now, with a Republican majority a certainty in January of next year.

Implying that Sue Lowden and Jane Norton were better candidates, or that Todd Akin didn't squeek by in a three-way primary against two tea-party opponents...

Besides, shouldn't the Senate already be 50-50, given that Republicans had such stellar recruits as George Allen, Tommy Thompson, Denny Rehberg, Rick Berg, and Scott Brown running in contested races last cycle?

[SPC]

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And this is why Republicans lost Senate races in Colorado, Nevada, Indiana, Missouri, and Delaware.

To reiterate, the Senate could be 50-50 right now, with a Republican majority a certainty in January of next year.

Implying that Sue Lowden and Jane Norton were better candidates, or that Todd Akin didn't squeek by in a three-way primary against two tea-party opponents...

Besides, shouldn't the Senate already be 50-50, given that Republicans had such stellar recruits as George Allen, Tommy Thompson, Denny Rehberg, Rick Berg, and Scott Brown running in contested races last cycle?

That's the wrong way to look at it. George Allen and Tommy Thompson were never going to win to begin with -- they were running in a presidential election year in what now basically are election year blue states. Denny Rehberg and Rick Berg both ran very close races. Do you think Scott Brown really lost in Massachusetts because he wasn't conservative enough?!?!

Be reasonable. Do you really think Jane Norton would have performed worse than Ken Buck in CO in 2010? Do you really think Michael Castle would have performed worse than Christine O'Donnell in Delaware? You think someone like Ann Wagner or, hell, even John Danforth hastily called out of retirement couldn't have run better against Claire than Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin did?

It makes no sense to compare Tea Partiers who lost to non-TPers who lost in completely different states in different years. The fact is that all of their "establishment" opponents from the primary would have, while not necessarily won, performed better in the general election. And they wouldn't have generated the negative press and punchlines that people like Akin and O'Donnell and others do.

The point is there are more factors at work than whether a candidate is "Tea Party". Buck, O'Donnell, and Akin were clearly bad candidates regardless of their Tea Party affiliation (and, as I mentioned earlier, referring to Akin as the "Tea Party" candidate in the Missouri primary is dubious at best). While it is easy to dismiss Allen and Thompson's chances with 20/20 hindsight, the fact that they were either statistically tied or ahead in public polling a few months before the election makes the idea that "they were never going to win anyway" sound more like sour grapes than a serious argument. Yes, Rehberg and Berg ran close races...in deep red states Montana and North Dakota. Mourdock ran a close race too. Obviously nobody could have performed better than Scott Brown or Mike Castle in Massachusetts and Delaware, respectively. However, I would think the fact that both candidates managed to lose by decent margins despite high approval ratings makes them just as culpable for losing easy races as the canon "Tea Party" examples.

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Despite his personal popularity, Scott Brown lost in Massachusetts, because he was a Republican. People liked him, but Warren basically ran on "a vote for Brown is a vote for a Republican Senate," as Senate control was still very much up in the air. If anything, it is more of a problem with the national brand of the party than Brown himself.

And you don't think Brown's obsession with Warren's race had anything to do with his loss?

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You don't think his inability to clinch renomination in a state he'd held elected office in for decades may have been indicative of flaws as a candidate? If so, then why is there a double standard where Castle can't be blamed for losing a primary election to a nobody but Buck can be blamed for losing a general election to a sitting senator?

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Apparently enough that Harry Reid thought she should be the nominee for Lieutenant Governor.

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Would the McInnis/Maes/Tancredo circus somehow have been prevented had Jane Norton been nominated? Additionally, for a Tea Party candidate, Buck was sure reluctant to associate with them.

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Mourdock was twice elected to statewide office by large margins. Predicting that he would make a fatal gaffe would have been a lot more difficult in May than making a similar prediction for Angle, Buck, or O'Donnell.

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Neither Montana nor North Dakota are "deep red states" for non-presidential races.

And Indiana, a state where a Democrat was elected governor four of the six previous elections, Pence won by a mere three points, and the congressional delegation was majority Democratic as recently as 2010, qualifies?

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Then don't use that excuse to defend Rehberg and Berg's losses, unless you genuinely consider a 4 point loss a close race but a 5 point loss a landslide.

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Would you have predicted in May 2012 that a person twice elected to statewide office (once with >60% of the vote) would lose?

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Obviously hindsight is 20/20. At the time, Mourdock seemed favored. Every analyst had the race as Lean Republican after the primary. How was a Republican primary voter at the time supposed to know that Donnelly would run a better than expected campaign and Mourdock would make a fatal gaffe, anymore than they could predict that Heitkamp would run a better than expected campaign and Berg would be a bad candidate? 

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This sums up my thoughts:

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