Didn't you talk about the calculus of a Republican win in MD-3 a few weeks before the election?
Anyway, I agree that the Republicans never took it seriously and that 33% is misleadingly low. That said, Cardin was known to be abandoning the seat very early in the cycle, before anyone knew the election cycle was going to tilt so strongly 'RAT, so it's surprising they didn't even make a feint toward contesting the seat if it's as competitive as some would argue.
I don't know what makes a 45% Bush seat (2004) as uncompetitive as this one turned out to be. But I don't know Anne Arundel County.
You're right, I did write about MD-03 after the NRCC mentioned the seat as one that could go our way---it actually made the claim the day before the election, not the week before, making it's claim even more risible.
This is what I wrote on November 6:
"President Bush got 45%, not 48%, in the MD-03 in 2004; I'm not sure about what Ehrlich got in 2002, but I think it was probably between 51%-54%. Still, I think Ehrlich and Steele have an excellent chance of winning tomorrow, and if they do so Ehrlich will have carried the MD-03 while Steele would have come close (he's running against the district's current Congressman, so it would be very difficult for him to carry it). The RATs are running Senator Sarbanes's son, who has name ID but not much else, and I have long thought that this race should be on the radar screen (actually, the district has been on my radar screen since the Democrats approved that grotesque gerrymander in 2001 and put too many Republicans into the district). I'm glad to hear that the NRCC has not given up on it."
I was wrong about how Ehrlich and Steele would do in the election, and about the competitiveness of the MD-03 race. I assumed that the NRCC wouldn't have mentioned it as a possibly upset unless the race was close, but obviously that was not the case. As I wrote today, I think the GOP was trying to confuse MD Democrats, maybe trick them into conducting a last-minute poll in the MD-03 instead of getting out the vote in Montco, PG and Baltimore City.
For the record, I think that the Democrats made a mistake when they drew the MD-08 to be so heavily Democrat and left the Cardin, Ruppersberger and Hoyer districts as no more Democrat than the state as a whole. The Democrats could have probably drawn 7 districts that were more heavily Democrat than the state while drawing one ultra-GOP CD in northern MD, but they couldn't have made the MD-08 give Bush only 33% in 2000. I don't think it was necessary to draw a 67% Dem MD-08 to defeat Morella; splitting Montco into several districts, drwaing in voters whom Morella had never represented, would have done the trick.