It's hard to be a Republican these days....

By Fester: 

If I was a Republican strategist, I would be drinking heavily tonight, and most nights as I came home from a very discouraging job this cycle.  Their party is losing in solid Republican districts, they are broke, their opponents are energized and amazingly well funded, and their flagship brand, their presidential nominee has a serious problem. As Ross Douhat at the Atlantic points out, McCain looks to be maxing out his support as he has no serious challenge to his reputation or his personal brand. However being a Republican is sufficient to lock him significantly below a majority.

But by all rights, this ought to be a peak time for McCain's numbers - not the peak, necessarily, but certainly a high point. His right-wing critics are making nice with him, his favorable ratings are sky-high, and his opponents are too busy driving each other's negative ratings upward to spend any time (or money, more importantly) putting a dent in his halo. Moreoever, the Democrats' intra-party tensions are bound to diminish once the party picks a nominee: At least some of the Hillary supporters who tell pollsters that they'd vote for McCain over Obama may actually follow through on that pledge, but a lot of today's McCainocrats will come home to the Democratic fold when all is said and done.

Yet even with all this going for him, McCain's poll numbers are bumping up against the same 45 percent ceiling that they've been hitting since December. If the election were held today - a pretty good day for McCain, all things considered - he'd probably lose to Obama, and might lose to Clinton as well. That doesn't mean he will lose, by any stretch, but it certainly doesn't bode well for November.

As we saw in Pennsylvania, campaigning matters, especially if the campaigner is better funded and more charismatic than their opponent in allowing a rapid change in numbers.  And either Democrat, Obama or Clinton, is more charismatic and will be vastly better funded with coordinated hard dollars than McCain in August, September, October and November.  So today would be a rough day.

And the problem is not just isolated to a single high profile, high informlation race which is the Presidential race. Instead there is increasing evidence of profound and systemic dadmage to the Republican brand in the special elections.  Democrats did better than they normally should have in the OH-5, won in former Republican Speaker of the House Hastert's district of IL-14, and now have assembled both a single candidate plurality and a partisan majority in the first round of voting in MS-1.  There is also a good chance for the Democrats to win the special election and take a Republican seat in LA-6. 

All of these seats, using traditional metrics, are either tilt Republican or solidly Republican with long standing organizational and demographic advantages.  Locally suitable and well organized Democrats should, traditionally, manage to not embarrass themselves while losing but they should lose most of the time.  However that is not the case this year.  MS-1 is a +10 GOP district, and LA-6 is a +7 GOP district using Cook PVI but it is very likely that at least one of these seats will be Democratic pick-ups.  It is more likely that both seats go Democratic than both seats stay Republican at this time.  And these seats are in the 'solid South.'

If I am a Republican strategist, I would be drinking as even the demographics that should provide a firebreak are failing and the last reserves of money is no longer sufficient as the Democrats finally are operating at a signficant cash advantage for the first time in my memory.