RS sends me a bit this morning, regarding the special congressional race in Mississippi yesterday, where a district which once voted for President Bush by a 25 point margin instead elected a Democrat, Travis Childers, by an eight-point margin.

This is one of the many tea leaves which suggests that as competitive as we think the race in November is going to be, as much as we think the Obama-Hillary flap is hurting the Democratic Party, the troubles on the GOP side of the aisle may be far, far more serious than is generally acknowledged; that, in fact, the wheels are coming off the GOP brand. That, as Larison notes here, the attempts to use the spectre of Nancy Pelosi to frighten voters isn’t working:

The party is in dire straits, and it is going to suffer many losses, but I would still insist that LA-06 and MS-01 are special cases with respect to the South.  Whether or not the ballot listed partisan affiliations, by the time of the run-off it seems likely most voters knew that Childers was a Democrat.  This suggests that the GOP can no longer expect the regular support of rural and small town voters on the basis of the party brand and the old one-trick pony of warning about godless Californian liberals coming to get you.

And if the GOP loses the small town voters, they’re simply doomed. 

Notes RS:

The presidential race could still go either way, but even if we end up with a Republican president we can probably expect that he will have a stronger Democratic majority to contend with.

Easily a sixty vote veto override in the Senate and a very unfriendly house.

Split government is not a bad thing.