Let's roll.
For over forty years the Democrats controlled the state Legislature in Missouri. As late as the spring of 2000 Republicans in the state legislature would direct conservatives looking for interships to work with Democratic legislators since, as I heard one GOP Rep say, "If you're are Republican in Missouri, you have no power". In the past six years the tide turned in favor of the GOP. Most of us know that Missouri has voted for Bush handily in the last two elections, but to give you a sense of how Red the state has become, here's a chart comparing the make-up of the State House from 2000, and one from 2006.
Along with the rest of the country in this election, the Iraq War, 43's approval rating, and general frustration wove together a tapestry beautiful for Dems. In a typical election year, Talent would have won re-election handily. Talent was a workhorse in the Senate. He stayed off the Sunday talk shows and was never mentioned in the conversations about "those extreme right-wingers" in Congress. He was never mentioned as a Presidential hopeful, and never had to go on local tv to justify his votes. He just went to work. But this was no typical election year.
Credit McCaskill for running an intense, grinding campaign. No one can take anything away from her. At the same time, she had the wind at her back the whole campaign. Riding along with McCaskill was the Missouri Stem-Cell Amendment. The 6-page, 2000-word amendment had the support of upwards of 70% of Missourians in early summer. By election day that race was a nail-biter. McCaskill used the amendment in ways that Talent could not. Jim kept his position on the issue as quiet as he could for as long as he could. Coming out against something so popular would have been suicide. Not coming out against it made the base quite angry. So Jim did what he could: no big speeches; dodge the issue where possible; come out in support of all non-cloning stem-cell research.
McCaskill, on the other hand, trumpeted the issue in the weeks before election day. She made national news when she ran an ad with Michael J. Fox, off his meds (as was his custom according to his own book) touting the candidate's position on the issue, and blasting Talent (by name) for the same. On election day, both Talent and and his position on the Amendment were defeated. Below are two maps comparing, county-by-county, the Senate race and the stem-cell amendment.
The two overlap pretty well. All along people assumed that if you voted for the amendment, you had to vote for Claire, and if you didn't you had to vote for Jim. While that appears to be the case, it was not absolute. It certainly was not absolute in rural Missouri. Darn near no counties outside of St.Louis, KC, and Columbia voted for the amendment. Support for Talent was not nearly as uniform, which was likely his undoing.If Talent had been more vocal in his opposition to the amendment, could he have rallied the base a bit more and swung more of the "Claire Catholics" to his side?
Probably not. Coming out forcefully against the amendment would have only rallied St. Louis and KC more strongly against him. This election may well be the beginning of a trend: rural Missouri can no longer stand in opposition to the will of St.Louis and Kansas City. The urban vote did in Talent. Even the suburban vote killed him--he lost 10,000 votes compared to when he ran in 2002 in the heavily Republican St. Charles county, just outside St. Louis.
Claire ran a good campaign--appeals to emotion, demonizing all things Republican, linking Talent to Bush, screaming for a higher Minimum Wage (also on the Missouri ballot), beating the stem-cell drum, producing better advertising, and campaigning hard in traditionally Republican territory.
In a normal year, nice-guy Mr. Talent goes back to Washington. This was the wrong year to come up for re-election.
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