Dems Heartened by Narrow Loss in Ohio

[Rose Siding]

CINCINNATI - Even though their candidate lost, Democrats said Wednesday that their close second-place finish in an Ohio congressional election gives them momentum heading into 2006....
...
"This very red district became a lot bluer," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The result shows "there is no safe Republican district," he said.
...
Amid chants of "'06," Hackett said Tuesday night: "You win some and you lose some. When you win some, you're happy; when you lose some, you take a day off, you go check out the game tapes and see where you messed up, so you learn from your mistakes, and you start practicing to win the next one."

When pressed later, Hackett said that first, he'll likely return to duty in Iraq next year with his unit. The Marine Reserve major completed a seven-month tour this year.

He has not ruled out running again.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050803/ap_on_el_ge/ohio_house_race

[Greeby]

1. To quote Malloy

""Close" only counts for horse shoes and hand grenades!"

[Old Vet]

3. Not this time............

It was important to even try and make this competitive, So from my angle close was surprising.

[Teaser]

4. Malloy doesn't know what he's talking about

He shoots off his mouth too much, at times.

This was a demonstration project, to show what the netroots could do in a strong REpublican district.

I never expected Hackett to win. I just wanted the GOP to know we are going to contest everything from now on. And now they know.

[dad]

9. Conest everything, my ass

Do you really think they're going to contest the new Supreme Court Justice? Keep dreaming. The Dems are just a bunch of pussies, sorry to say but our elected D's have NO BALLS, at all.

[Teaser]

12. read for content, please

we're talking about contesting elections here. You, apparently, are talking about other things.

[mtnester]

13. and shitball fights

if you do not think the Dems are in a hand grenade or shitball fight with the neocons....we are.

In a district where "close" has not even been in the vocabulary for more than 20 years, it is very encouraging.

[Dover]

2. With all the Ohio Repubs corruption in the news there, HOW is it that

a Republican got that many votes? It boggles the mind....

[VegasWolf]

6. One word, "Diebold!" nt

[theHandpuppet]

10. I believe the punchcard ballot was used in this district

I researched the matter just the other day and found an Ohio map indicating what votinf methods are used by each county.

[Jersey Ginny]

11. People think their political party is like their alma mater's fball team

They root for their "team" whether they suck or not. They don't pay attention and just see "Repuke" on the ballot and vote accordingly.

[eridani]

5. One mistake he needs to learn from--

--not demanding oversight of vote counting.

I don't believe the results myself. They are certainly plausible, and might even be true. But Clermont County is where people were caught putting stickers over punch holes for Kerry in Nov. 2004, and Warren County is where there was no oversight whatsoever of the counting process because they put our a fake terror alert. If he believes that similar crap was not pulled against himself, I have a bridge to sell him, cheap. A full audit might still have resulted in a narrow loss, but I refuse to believe any result that doesn't have one.

[last_texas_dem]

7. I think we should be

We came w/i 4-percentage pts. (less than 4,000 votes) in a solid red district, a district that gave Shrub 64-percent of the vote last November and where a Dem hasn't run this well in over thirty years. Granted, Hackett was an atypically strong candidate in some ways: Marine, Iraq veteran, strong presence; but at the same time he didn't play too safe either- but still managed to pull 48-percent in a Shrub-worshipping district even after he called the Chimp a "son of a bitch" and said that his "Bring it on" commment was one of the stupidest things he'd ever heard.

Sure, a victory in this special election would have been a nice prelude to the '06 elections, but I'll take the surprisingly strong showing that we got. Some areas of the country would vote for Shrub and his minions if he had sexual relations with a goat on live TV and there was a large concentration of those sort of voters in OH-2. The thing is, Hackett obviously managed to pull a sizeable portion of the saner residents of the district who typically vote Repug. Pulling enough of the saner Repugs (and there are still a decent amount of them left in this country- why they still haven't realized the party they're supporting is composed of a bunch of lunatics I'm not sure) to vote for the Dems in '06 is all it will take to really start the tide turning with the next election.

[shadowknows69]

8. great point to rally around

"we don't suck!!!" yippie