The bad news is that Francine Busby did not outperform the Democratic index in California's 50th CD yesterday. She got about 44%, which is an improvement over her performance against Duke Cunninghamn in 2004, but nothing to write home about. So it's off to a runoff, and she's not got a lot of money left, as she went for the win in her spending.

On the plus side, the combined Dem total was over 47%, the best Republican performer got 15%, and the runoff will be on June 6, the date of the California primaries, where all the contested races (including Governor) are on the Dem side. With that many Republicans pulling pieces of the vote, it's not clear that Brian Bilbray, the survivor of that mosh pit, will pull them all together for the rematch. Busby was slightly ahead of Bilbray in straight-up polls before the special, so we'll see what happens.

For more analysis, read MyDD (optimistic), Kos (pessimistic), Ezra (pessimistic), Chuck Todd (a little of each), and The Stakeholder (optimistic).