The NYT has a good profile of Jon Tester and his hometown:

For all the talk about the new Democrats swept into office on Tuesday, the senator-elect from Montana truly is your grandfather’s Democrat — a pro-gun, anti-big-business prairie pragmatist whose life is defined by the treeless patch of hard Montana dirt that has been in the family since 1916.

It is a place with 105-degree summer days and winter chills of 30 below zero, where his grandparents are buried, where his two children learned to grow crops in a dry land entirely dependent on rainfall, and where, he says, he earned barely $20,000 a year farming over the last decade.

“It’s always been tight, trying to make a living on that farm,” said Mr. Tester, still looking dazed and bloodshot-eyed after defeating Senator Conrad Burns, a three-term incumbent, by fewer than 3,000 votes.

Chouteau County, where Mr. Tester lives on a homestead of 1,800 acres, lost 8.5 percent of its population in the last five years — typical of much of rural America that has been in decline since the Dust Bowl.

To make extra money, Mr. Tester taught music to schoolchildren, and still plays a decent trumpet despite having only seven fingers (he lost the rest to a meat grinder as a child). He got into politics just eight years ago in a sustained rage over what utility deregulation had done to small farmers and businesses in Montana.

“You think of the Senate as a millionaire’s club — well, Jon is going to be the blue-collar guy who brings an old-fashioned, Jeffersonian ideal about being tied to the land,” said Steve Doherty, a friend of Mr. Tester’s for 20 years. “He’s a small farmer from the homestead. That’s absolutely who he is. That place defines him.”

NYT:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 — Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year’s fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said.

The decision to effectively write off Mr. DeWine’s seat, after a series of internal Republican polls showed him falling behind his Democratic challenger, is part of a fluid series of choices by top leaders in both parties as they set the strategic framework of the campaign’s final three weeks, signaling, by where they are spending television money and other resources, the Senate and House races where they believe they have the best chances of success.

Republicans are now pinning their hopes of holding the Senate on three states — Missouri, Tennessee and, with Ohio off the table, probably Virginia — while trying to hold on to the House by pouring money into districts where Republicans have a strong historical or registration advantage, party officials said Sunday. Republicans also said they would run advertisements in New Jersey this week to test the vulnerability of Senator Robert Menendez, one of the few Democrats who appear endangered.

With just over three weeks to go, Republicans are on the run. Keep them there by contributing to your favorite Dems today.

The new ad from the Tester campaign:

Keep it on the air.

(Full disclosure: I'm doing work on the Tester campaign.)

Digby:

What in the hell are the Dems going to do if McCain makes a deal and this [torture bill] gets to the floor? Are they actually going to vote for a bill that eliminates habeas corpus for terrorist suspects? Because if they don't, you know what the Republicans are going to be saying, don't you? After all, the saviors of the republic and guardian kinghts of the constitution say this bill is ok. The only reason the Dems can possibly have for opposing it now is that they are terrorist loving cowards.

I have to assume the Dems have good reasons for letting McCain run with this. But they are certainly placing a lot of trust in a man who is running for president from the opposing party. If Democrats in 2006 end up voting for this McCain/Warner/Graham monstrosity based on nothing but McCain's word they have learned nothing. Unless they are willing to filibuster a month before the election, which I seriously doubt, the Republicans will have backed them into exactly the same corner they did with the Iraq war resolution and the Homeland security bills in 2002. I'm not going to believe it until I see it with my own eyes, but I'm worried.

Me too. I'll never again underestimate the ability of some leaders of a certain party to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And 49 days is just enough time to lose control.