Claire McCaskill has been voted in as Senator of Missouri, defeating incumbent Jim Talent, who hadn't really given voters reason to complain yet was swept out with the big blue wave. It could, of course, have just been that big blue wave; Lord knows it's been enough elsewhere. However, it's worth looking at the effect of the Michael J. Fox pro-stem cell research ad on McCaskill's campaign. Though Fox taped spots for Maryland and Wisconsin, the Missouri spot hit first, and was the one that flew around YouTube and captured the sympathy and attention of so many people...and drew the ire of Rush Limbaugh which took it to a new level of national attention and outrage (well, except for Matt Lauer). That put McCaskill and her campaign on the national stage, and ratcheted up the stakes a bit. McCaskill herself demurred a bit tonight on MSNBC (gamely chatting at something like 2 a.m.), noting that on the ground in Missouri there were very much issues of accountability and Iraq, but she also acknowledged the upside to the furor: "Rush Limbaugh's reaction to the Michael J. Fox video certainly helped raise me a lot of money, and I'm very grateful to him for that!" Still, there's no doubt that the power of that video, combined with Fox's celebrity (not to mention all the callbacks to his young Republican Alex P. Keaton), had a very real impact in this election.
