Tuesday's Significant Election

If are thinking about West Virgina, think again.

Last night, Democrat Travis Childers won the special election for Mississippi's 1st congressional district. Childers winning one congressional seat is relatively insignificant on the surface, but there is a larger trend.

Childers is the third Democrat to win a special congressional election in the last three months. This has the Republicans very nervous for their already dim prospects in the fall.

Historically, Mississippi's first congressional district is considered one of the safest Republican districts with Bush winning 62% of the vote out of Missippi's 1st in 2004. Childers' Republican challenger Greg Davis tried to nationalize the battle by repeatedly invoking Sen. Obama and Rep. Pelosi in ads and speeches, but no one took the bait.

On a day when the pundits raise concerns over the Democrats prospects in November given Obama's troubling performance in West Virginia moot primary, perhaps they are missing the much more telling signs coming from the Mississippi bayou.