Dems crushed in Upper Michigan

[Kaleva]

Gary McDowell (D) lost in the Mi-01 race... Seat formerly held by Stupak (D) who retired
Mike Lahti (D) lost the 38th state Senate race...seat formerly held by Mike Prusi (D) who retired
Scott Dianda (D) lost the 110th state House race....seat formerly held by Mike Lahti(D)
Incumbent Judy Nerat(D) lost the 108th state House race
Incumbent Steve Lindberg (D) held on in the 109th state House race.
Dick Timmer (D) lost in the 107th state House race....seat formerly held by Gary McDowell(D)

Out of 6 seats held by Dems in this region of Michigan, 5 switched to Republican today.

My feeling is that had Stupak not retired, he would have won (maybe not by the 60-70% margins he did in past elections) and that in turn would have helped the Dems in the local state races.

I also think Stupak's switch from a "nay" to a "yea" vote on HCR really fired up the Repubs and Teabaggers here. Until then, there was only one Republican who had entered the race (Stupak was generally considered to be unbeatable). Benishek was a small town doctor who never held public office before, whose campaign staff consisted of his wife and a few friends and they had a couple of thousand dollars in their campaign fund. After Stupak switched his vote, the money flooded to Benishek and he was able to use that to defeat an establishment Republican by 15 votes who had entered the race after Stupak announced his retirement. McDowell, the Dem candidate for Congress, was never able to raise anywhere near the money Benishek had.

[ScreamingMeemie]

The general feeling that 'everything wrong with the economy is Granholm's

fault' did not help elect Dems in my home state either.

[Odin2005]

1. When did the Yoopers turn dumb?

[glinda]

2. I live in MN. and this result has me truly bummed.

[TheKentuckian]

3. Less bad is a big uphill sale to the completely fucked under the full weight of the shitheap.

[Warpy]

4. They've always been conservative as all hell

which is why they elected an antichoice far right religious nutjob like Stupak in the first place. If they'd given us another Democrat, we'd probably dislike him, too.

[notesdev]

5. Michigan is now a red state

The county margin-of-vote map is particularly sad... whole state is uniformly 10-20% in favor of GOP outside a couple of urban centers.

Illinois is looking very much the same as well, if not for Chicago's massive population it would be a solid red state.

[Kaleva]

6. I can't think of a single time in the past decades where Dems didn't dominate..

Upper Michigan. I'd have to do some research but I believe this is the first in my lifetime when this happened.