Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air is wondering why there was no money allocated for [mc_name name=’Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’L000550′ ]’s runoff:

This runoff was a flat-out certainty for months, which is why the GOP and its allies planned for big spending in Louisiana past Election Day. They put money aside even while aggressively spending against Democratic incumbents — like Landrieu herself, [mc_name name=’Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’P000590′ ], [mc_name name=’Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’B001265′ ], [mc_name name=’Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’H001049′ ], and [mc_name name=’Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’S001181′ ] and [mc_name name=’Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’W000805′ ] in narrow losses. …Yet no one in Democratic circles prepared for the four-week campaign to save Landrieu from Barack Obama and herself.

Well, perhaps it’s due to a bad call on the DSCC’s part. Let us pretend, for a moment, that the results in 538’s last Senate ranking were correct, and reflected election night results. Well, in that scenario the GOP is not at 53 Senate seats and counting: we’re at 50. That’s because in that scenario we lost North Carolina and effectively Kansas (we will no longer pretend that Greg Orman was anything but a Democrat), and Georgia is on its way to a runoff election. As is Louisiana, of course; but in that situation a Democratic strategist could legitimately conclude that it would be simple enough to fund an emergency drive to take/flip the seats and retain the Senate. It would not be a hard sale, given the knife’s-edge nature of the scenario – which was, mind you, also the Democrats’ public worse-case scenario.

Only… nope!  Things got worse for Democrats, hilariously enough. North Carolina flipped, Kansas stayed red, and Georgia isn’t running off anything.  And, oh, yeah, the shocking loss of the Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin governor races did very little to make Democratic donors feel great about themselves, either.  Moral of the story: you can’t bank optimism.  Or possibly just Be prepared.

No, wait, progressive Democrats hate the Boy Scouts.  Forget I used that one.

(Image via Shutterstock.)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*This is not actually Nate Silver’s fault. It would be fairer to say that they listened to selected portions of what Nate Silver was saying.  I find that I am enjoying watching Silver’s models crash and burn a good deal less than I thought that I would, given that the man himself seems to becoming weary of being treated as a guru by rigid partisans who were only semi-literate in math.  Besides, Silver was in fact careful to keep his own partisan instincts in check for this one.