If the 2008 Senate races have you down, perhaps it’s worth looking back at what may have been the most important Senate race of 2004: Jon Thune’s victory over Tom Daschle. That’s the topic of today’s Between the Covers interview, with Jon Lauck, the author of a new book on the race. He talks about what went right for Thune, how the GOP used blogs to overcome a strong pro-Daschle bias in the local media, and why the Dakotans always seem to split their votes between Republican presidential candidates and Democratic senatorial candidates (Thune’s being the exception that proves the rule).