Last night, there was a special election held in a state Senate district in Pennsylvania that was left vacant by a late Republican. The seat clearly leans Republican, going for McCain by 53%-46% but going 55%-45% for Bob Casey in 2006 and a majority of registered voters in the district are Democrats. The seat was a great chance for Democrats to start cutting away at the Republicans' 30-20 lead in the chamber. Unfortuntely, the Democratic candidate got just 38% of the vote last night. It appears that what happened, again, was that Democrats lost all interest in going out to vote.
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/...
These state legislative elections are VERY, VERY important. They will determine who controls the 2011 redistricting that will in turn determine who controls Congress for the next decade. Pennsylvania is one of the most important states at the state legislative level because we only have a 104-99 majority in the House and could lose the governorship in 2010. If Republicans get control of the state House and governorship, they will be able to gerrymander the Congressional map like they did in 2002 and make Democrats absorb the states loss of House districts.
I know many of you will ask me "why didnt you tell us about this race before?". The reason is that I posted the special election in the Maine House that was held in February and we lost that one by a 67%-33% margin in a district that Obama had carried by 65%-35%. Having the White House is nice, but continuing to get beat in these key state legislative races month after month is starting to hurt. I really wish there was more of an effort to focus on local elections here on Daily Kos rather than simply simply talking about policy. You need to win these local elections and build up a good farm team in order to affect policy.