Michael Castle 2010 = Lincoln Chafee 2006?

[Dan the Roman]

While I think Castle is in a different boat from Chafee, he may well be vulnerable to the same factor that doomed the latter, namely, while voters may be very happy to have Castle as the 45th or 46th GOP vote in the senate, they will not want him as the 51st. Had senate control not been in doubt in 2006 Chafee would have won regardless of Bush, what doomed him was that control was at stake.

This is a reason I think that counter-intuitively, the chances of Mark Kirk and Mike Castle are actually inversely related to any Republican wave. Both are running well on their own merits and their opponents' weaknesses and any nationalization, especially in terms of a discussion of a GOP takeover is likely to move the races from territory where they are strong(local issues) to where their strengths and positives frankly don't matter. And Coons is not all that worse than Whitehouse.

Frankly, had senate control overall been in doubt, the results in MA would have been very different. Hence why an Obama defeat likely would spell the same for Scott Brown next year.