Davegnyc–I agree that the war is a big loser for the GOP, and House results across the country this year will continue to reflect that, but even as good as Democratic recruitment has been they do not have a Travis Childers for every district or even for every competitive district. For some of the freshmen Democrats who took over districts because of scandals, whether in TX-22 or FL-16, this will be an extremely difficult election simply because of the make-up of the districts that they lucked into last time.

I pity poor Yarmuth in KY-03, who is probably going to be destroyed (politically) in the gale-force winds of anti-Obama sentiment that George Packer has described and that I have been noting in the Kentucky polling. Yarmuth’s likely difficulty because of his support for Obama doesn’t mean that the Democrats are losing their inherent advantages on the war or other policies; it means that local political circumstances could end up trumping secular trends. As for the Illinois district lost in the special election, that is much less remarkable than the Mississippi case, given the awfulness of Jim Oberweis as a candidate and the overall trends in this state that make an endorsement from Obama helpful rather than disastrous. Certainly, weakness in suburban districts in the Midwest should worry the GOP a lot, and I think some of the survivors of ’06 will not endure another challenge.

We may see the Illinois district balanced out by an anti-Obama backlash in Kentucky or elsewhere. Meanwhile, Childers may be an example of local politics taking precedence, where a Democrat does far better than anyone had reason to expect because of the unique traits of the candidate and his relationship to the district. Loose talk a few months ago from the Obama camp about “putting Mississippi in play” was silly, and I don’t think the GOP’s position in the rest of the South is fundamentally as bad as the MS-01 race suggests.

I know this may not be the most appropriate venue, but I can’t find another means of contacting you.

I have recently taken an interest in Just War theory. I would be interested in any book recommendations about morally and legally defensible war and foreign policy in general. Currently, the only book I have found was Just and Unjust War by Michael Walzer and I must say I find foreign policy critiques based on universalist principles extremely annoying and rather dangerous.

If you have some suggestions, you can contact me at panopticon23 AT gmail.com or just post a comment here.

But this seems to be huge news. An antiwar candidate does better than the prowar candidate in a Bush +25 district?

That is huge.

This is the second Republican to get hit in a strong Republican district. The war is BIG loser. It is the albatross around the necks of the Republicans.