The murmurings that the media and Republicans, and quite frankly the murmurings show that the Democrats are fixated on this as well, have focused their coverage of Tim Johnson’s sudden medical emergency on electoral ramnifications — how a possible Tim Johnson replacement from the Republican South Dakota Governor (mentioned in the first paragraph of every story on the situation I’ve seen or heard) — elicits one response from me, the writer of the “Skull / Bones” blog:

“You were expecting something else?”

I can’t even say it can be otherwise, even if we wanted the world to be nice.  Could the average American voter pick Tim Johnson out of a line-up?  To ignore the electoral ramnifications in carrying out a story on the situation.

It looks as though Tim Johnson will be fine, and will carry on his Senate term, up in November of 2008.  Which puts him ahead of the three Senator who my civic memory is able to come up with who died, and then had much of their subsequent political coverage concerned largely with how they affect electoral outcomes.

In 2000, Georgia’s Republican Senator died.  The Democratic Governor of Georgia appointed a Democratic Senator, who I will not mention except to say that you hate him.  The media then reported that the Democrats now had a better chance of winning the Senate, now that the Democrats only had to win four Senate seats instead of five.

In October of 2000, Mel Carnahan, in a tight race with John Ashcroft in Missouri, died.  And the media dutifully reported on how this affected the Senate situation — as it goes, it was thought to be a negative for the Democrats because, as Republican strategists put it, “John Ashcroft is unlikely to lose to a ghost.”  The political considerations that the Democrats had was to keep their voters coming anyways, because a loss of Democratic voters would hamper the gubernatorial candidate and Al Gore.

And in October of 2002, Paul Wellstone died.  It took a couple days for Walter Mondale to be thrust into the race.  Norm Coleman took a lesson from Ashcroft’s failed race against a ghost, and went on to win.  The media covered the electoral situation.

It’s… how it goes.

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