Michael Barone, who knows everything about everything political, has a blog up at US News in which he says the Ohio special election results are bad news because Republican turnout was down compared to the 2004 election while the Democratic turnout was up — the anti-Bushites were energized and the Republicans either complacent or uninterested. One would be a fool to dismiss anything Barone says, but the fact is that the Republican candidate was a bad one and the Democratic candidate was (despite some odd behavior) a uniquely well-positioned one because of his Iraq War service. Sometimes races are about themselves and not about national trends. To the extent this race was about itself and not about a national trend, it doesn’t seem to have very much meaning either way. A bad Republican candidate kept a safe Republican seat by a 4-point margin after a scare was thrown into her and the GOP, and that may be all there is to it.