Washington Post article: Why Todd Akin win gives McCaskill campaign hope

Today's Washington Post features an examination of how Todd Akin's win over John Brunner and Sarah Steelman in Tuesday's primary offers hope to the re-election campaign of Claire McCaskill...or at least, that's what her supporters are thinking.

There’s a reason why Democrats spent over $1.5 million trying to help Akin win his three-way primary. He was the most conservative candidate in the field — and the most unpredictable one. He shook up his campaign staff late last year. He recently released a head-scratching and jumbled campaign ad. And Democrats have already launched a microsite highlighting his controversial statements that won’t play well with moderates. (“America has got the equivalent of the stage III cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in,” Akin once said.)Akin is far from an ideal Republican nominee. But the GOP doesn’t need a superstar to defeat McCaskill. She is running in a state where Mitt Romney is expected to defeat President Obama. She will have to confront opposition ads that will attack her for billing taxpayers for trips she took on a plane she co-owned with her husband. She has long been one of the most high profile backers of the President.And, recent polling from Mason Dixon Polling & Research Inc. shows McCaskill is losing to Akin by a slight margin. (It is worth noting that the same poll of the primary electorate showed businessman John Brunner leading Akin by 16 points.)