That doesn't erase the need for good, hard-working candidates to take on both men.
We have to make them work for it.
Absent the Senate race, your ‘08 may be similar to what happened in my state in TN. Our rodent Governor (who used illicit means by flagrantly violating campaign financing laws to narrowly win election in ‘02) attracted a 2nd tier State Senator challenger (though despite hailing from a wealthy district, had very little money), and ended up winning in a landslide 69-30% margin. Out of 95 counties, the Republican failed to carry ANY (!), including losing his own county by 58-42%, shockingly embarrassing.
But that was the bad news.
We also had the open Senate seat of Frist’s to defend. The rodents already had coalesced around Black Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., a Memphis liberal. Ford ran a very smart campaign, and ran like he was the REPUBLICAN candidate. We had a bad situation brewing on the GOP side, as the candidate the Conservative grassroots preferred, former Congressman and House Impeachment Manager Ed Bryant (Bryant had prosecuted Ford’s daddy as a US Attorney in the early ‘90s, so such a showdown between Bryant and Junior would’ve been delicious). The candidate for the liberal RINO Establishment was outgoing Chattanooga Mayor Bob “Chattanooga Chafee” Corker. Corker had been so well-regarded by the Democrats that they tried to entice him to run for office back to the ‘90s, and with good reason. He was a squish on everything, and he was simply near-impossible for Conservatives of conscience to swallow. I couldn’t defend him.
In any event, the very wealthy Corker against the modest Bryant was going to be difficult going, but not impossible in a one-on-one match... and then came the giant turd in the punchbowl. Ex-Congressman Van Hilleary, Gov. Bredesen’s ‘02 Gubernatorial opponent all of a sudden “decided” he wanted into the Senate race. Nobody wanted him, especially Conservatives, as he would split the vote (and in our state, there IS no runoff. If you win 12% (or even 1% + 1 vote) in a primary, no matter how nutty you are, you get the nomination). We were screaming at Hilleary to get the hell out of the race and he simply refused. Even in the last weeks leading up to the election with Corker blanketing the airwaves pretending to be a Conservative, the roar was deafening. Bryant was picking up steam, but Hilleary stayed put, and by the time the primary day came, Corker won a plurality, with Conservatives (making up the majority of the vote) getting screwed out of their rightful nominee. I suspected that Hilleary had some sort of link to the Corker campaign, designed to keep Bryant from the nomination, and was being paid off or some other sort of offer.
With Corker out of the chute and having gotten the nod, he STOPPED advertising and sat on his hands. Meanwhile, Junior Ford surged ahead in the polls statewide (and this was shocking, because the Ford family is synonomous with big city political corruption and hackery). My worst suspicion about Corker was that he was doing for the general election what Hilleary did for him, run interference for the bad guy, and WANTED Ford to win. With some prodding, Corker finally started to campaign and he went on the offense against Junior. Fred Thompson entered the fray (as ostensibly the most revered pol this state has had in recent times) and started cutting ads and helping out Corker (which helped considerably, and pulled them close to even in the polls).
What finally sank Junior was a key event he tried to orchestrate. Corker was holding a private event and Junior tried to crash it. Now, what he and his people (filming the event) wanted was for the Black Ford to be grabbed by some thuggish White bodyguards and dragged out kicking and screaming. That’s not what happened. Instead, Corker walked out, straight up to Junior, smiled, looked him straight in the eye and shook his hand, and told him what’s what (probably the only time Corker REALLY looked good) about how wrong he was to crash a private event, and with that, pretty much handed Junior his ass. Junior never quite recovered from the event, and lost by a narrow margin (Corker becoming the only new Republican to win a Senate seat in the disastrous ‘06 elections).
Back to Bredesen for a moment, and our state legislature. Also, just like MT, our legislature has been gerrymandered by the Democrats, despite the fact that they are a voting minority (they haven’t received a majority of the legislative vote, especially on the House side, since about 1992), and even with Bredesen’s near-70% landslide, his victory was a mile wide and an inch deep. Aside from picking up one seat in the State Senate (from a Senator who had switched to the GOP months beforehand), the Dems failed to capture a single other seat elsewhere. Finally, in January, we got to organize the State Senate for the first time in nearly 140 years (that is NOT a typo), despite the fact we had had a majority in the body since the previous session. Because of a complicated situation involving the Speaker of that body who had held the job for 36 years (longest serving leader of a legislative body in any state in US history), we finally deposed him and elected a GOP Senate Speaker (also called the Lieutenant Governor in our state).
To my knowledge, only TN, with our Senate Speaker, and MT’s House, with Scott Sales, were the sole legislative bodies that flipped to GOP control after the past election. Anyway, my point is that, even with the horrid Schweitzer, he could end up with a situation like we had, a wide reelection %, but failing to change the legislative situation.