Is it better for Missouri to have Claire McCaskill remain as state auditor -- or would state residents benefit more with McCaskill in the U.S. Senate?
Randy Turner, brother blogger over at The Turner Report, asks the question and raises good points. Click the headline above and be magically transported to TTR.
State Democrats have for months courted McCaskill to run against Sen. Jim Talent. Internal polling (allegedly) shows McCaskill and Talent at a 43-43 dead heat. McCaskill is expected to announce her campaign on Tuesday.
Talent's complete lack of charisma would normally be expected to doom his bid for reelection, but that's offset by McCaskill's rather brusque public persona. "I'll vote for her," one woman Democrat told CHATTER. "But I don't like her. She's too harsh."
Frankly, we'll take harsh over bland every time.
Fans of Missouri politics like to play the "what-if" game. Old-timers go all the back to 1976, when Rep. Jerry Litton died before he could beat Jack Danforth for the U.S. Senate. Newbies flash back to 2000, when Talent lost the governor's race to Bob Holden. History would have been kinder to the Dems if Talent had won in 2000; he would have been saddled with an economic downturn, he wouldn't have run for a truncated Senate term in 2002 -- and he probably would have kept Matt Blunt from running for governor in 2004.
Of course, history could have been kinder still. Mel Carnahan could still be alive and serving in the Senate.
Ojala. Oh, if only.
1 comment:
Of course, if the media had done the proper examination of Bill Webster before the 1992 election, Roy Blunt would have likely won both the Republican nomination and the governor's office, Mel Carnahan would still be alive, and we might be looking at Carnahan, Matt Blunt, and Claire McCaskill in entirely different positions. Hmm, then again without Roy Blunt as Seventh District Congressman, we might have Gary Nodler.
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