Josh Marshall's comment on the blog about ossifying Democratic machines being out of touch and voters calling them on it is something that deserves more attention. The dysfunctional mess that is Democratic politics in Illinois -- I hesitate to call it a party -- is begging for serious Republican opposition as well as serious primary challenge work. But the only one who seems remotely vulnerable at the moment is Dan Lipinski, and then only because of nepotism.

What concerns me is that Illinois desperately needs more public sector revenue because of education and infrastructure issues -- but the politicians who are proposing to raise taxes here are those whose units of government deserve it the least; primarily Cook County, which could get out of trouble with a click of Todd Stroger's fingers if only they would accept reality about how badly they run their health care system and how inefficient Cook county government is in general. This, plus the large tax increase proposed for somewhat better reasons in the city of Chicago, creates a raft of regressive taxes of ranging from the questionable to the utterly outrageous and an opportunity for antitax nuts to make real inroads in a metro area where they unfortunately will probably create more collateral damage for state projects and services that deserve funding than they will actually succeed in stopping sales tax and fee hikes.

If politicians here had guts and vision, they would constrain tax increases to the income tax alone, the one tax here that truly is rock-bottom, and then specifically earmark it towards things that desperately need fixing; capital projects in schools, roads and transit, and operating subsidies for classroom K-12 instruction. But we have a machine hack governor who took a no-new taxes pledge, a machine (if not quite so hack) house speaker who has blocked initiatives like this before, and a machine hack senate president who follows his leader (the gov). Talk about an opening for political insurgents, whether they be Republican, Green or anything else.

This is a no-win election.

The Democrats get a headline they'd rather not have: "Dems win Special Election in MA by Lackluster Margin."

The GOP puts a lot of resources (which, at the national level, they really did not have) into the race. The hype machine really went into overdrive in the last few days, with articles in major media outlets suggesting an upset. And they walk away with a six-point loss (the final count was 51-45-4). A lot of effort for yet another defeat in a close race.

They'll put a brave face on it, but they are crushed right now. They thought this was the turnaround for them.

Her husband had a lot of common sense and was pretty fiscally responsible for a northeastern liberal. Hopefully she can follow in his footsteps. This race for the Republicans is similar to the near miss in Ohio that the Democrats had against Jean Schmidt in a special election. Close but no cigar.

I'm from the 5th District and greatly resented the coronation of Tsongas by the local political machine. There were some great candidates in the primary, but she was not one of them. She was one of the least progressive, least charismatic and most offensive candidates running, the last in regards to her healthcare stance in which she advocated a letting the free market set healthcare prices, not unexpected for someone who worked in the HMO industry, but not someone I would want representing me. As a result, I almost didn't vote, but expecting a double digit victory, I voted for a more progressive independent (Patrick Murphy). I know how much each seat means to the Ds but the machine had to be told somehow that something needs to change.

I'm a resident of the 5th district. This is the most conservative district in MA. The wealthier suburbs have a big red streak running through them. Additionally, there was some local resentment about the fact that Tsongas had moved out of the district several years ago, and only started renting a condo in the district when she heard Meehan's seat was opening up. Ogonowski is a life-long resident of the district. At one point last night, I heard that Tsongas was behind Ogonowski with more than 50% of precincts reporting. But I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard that the majority of the uncounted votes came from the 2 largest cities in the district, Lowell and Lawrence. Both of these cities are strongly Democratic, and have large populations of minorities and lower-income voters. Lowell has a very soft spot for the Tsongas name, as it was Paul Tsongas' home town. They even named a sports arena in town after him. He played a big part in the revitalization of the city, even after he was no longer in any elected office. So I knew Lowell would go strongly for Tsongas.

I sort of resent some of the comments here by people who don't really know what they are talking about. You might not like it, but I seriously doubt that any of the other Dem candidates would have done any better than Tsongas did, and they may well have put the seat in even greater jeopardy, as they might not have motivated as many people to volunteer and go to the polls for them as Tsongas did, obviously due in no small part to her ties to the communities in the 5th District through her husband, who was very nearly the Dem nominee for President in 1992, after all.

Niki Tsongas didn't really "nearly lose." A win by 6% in a one-off, very low turnout special election against a very, very sentimental opponent is a fine performance.

Ogonowski's brother was a pilot on one of the 9/11 flights that crashed into the WTC, and his brother's widow taped highly emotional ads about how he saved their family farm in that time of crisis. Anti-immigrant sentiment also apparently plays well here, perhaps due to the large numbers of Latinos moving to Lawrence and Lowell. Good thing he didn't endorse S-CHIP.

If Ogonowski runs again in 2008, with a Democratic presidential candidate on the ticket, I seriously doubt that it will be as close.