There are now 199 Republican representatives in Congress.

The result of the stunning victory of Travis Childers (D-Miss now) in Mississippi's 1st congressional district (which Bush won by 25% in 2004)

When was the last time a major party had so few representatives ? If I recall correctly, January 1995.

Oh my. I knew that Miss-1 was a strongly Republican district, but it turns out that it contains half of the white flight suburbs of Memphis Tennessee. So far this month the Republicans have been busted flat in Baton Rouge and stuck in side of Mobile with the Memphis blues.

The two districts that just shifted (Miss-1 and La-06) are deep South suburbs of two cities with African American majorities (OK Baton Rouge was only 50.02 % African American as of the 2000 census but a majority is a majority).

The strategy of linking Democrats to Obama didn't work there. This is huge.

update: So what can the Republicans do ? Were they to quick to rule out singing "The good ship lollipop" in the fetal position ?