[Badray]

Nice argument, except that it was built on a faulty foundation.

The GOP control of the Senate was never in serious doubt.

A year before the race, all projections were for a 4 or 5 seat pickup which is what happened. Specter even said that his seat, if lost, would not switch control to the Democrats.

You may think that it puts you in good company, but you, Ricky, and Bush and the apologists are the only ones making that argument.

[old and tired]

The GOP control of the Senate was never in serious doubt.

I agree with you. Are you familiar with Steve Freind? He's the former PA legislator from Havertown who wrote the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act. He actually campaigned for Spector once the primary was over. I asked him if he would still be campaigning for Specter if he thought the Senate would hold its GOP majority. He refused to accept the premise.

It was another heartbreaking but eyeopening moment for me when I realized Steve Freind was also just another power hungry pol, looking to make a buck. I actually felt like vomiting that night and when I came back home and logged onto FR I jumped down the throat of some poor guy who came to FR to rally Catholics for Bush. The whole Toomey wound was still too raw for me to be feeling kindly towards Bush, who had propelled Arlen to victory.

[Flux Capacitor]

'Fraid you're wrong about all of this, bud, because your argument is built on the faulty foundation that people can safely predict the outcomes of elections a year before they happen according to a simplistic categorization of "red states" and "blue states", and using "projections" that don't take into account retirements of safe incumbents, or even whom the candidates are going to be. Those were the same "projections" that told us Harry Reid was in trouble, Lisa Murkowski was a goner, the Republicans in Louisiana would be carved up in the primary, and Jim Bunning was cruising to an easy re-election with a comfortable victory margin.

Anyone who really paid attention to the individual races knows that control of the Senate was in doubt right through the summer, until the GOP candidates in key races like LA, OK, and NC started pulling away. And as for whatever Specter said.... why should we start putting stock into anything Specter says? An open race between Toomey and Hoeffel would have been a 50/50 proposition, not a fait accompli simply because we would have wished it to be so.

You want a Democratic Senate? You're welcome to it, though I don't particularly appreciate your wishing to impose one on me. But I wouldn't want to hear a single member of the Pat Toomey Brigade complaining about Majority Leader Reid if Specter's seat had made the difference. Toomey lost, people. It's been a year since he lost. Get over it, deal with the situation as it exists, and stop acting like post-election Democrat crybabies who spend their time whining about how they coulda been contenders.

-Dan