Kos is wrong. Ohio and Rhode Island are much better bets for Democrats than MO.

The DailyKos ranking is in line with the National Journal's ranking ( http://nationaljournal.com/racerankings/senate/ ). NJ's Chuck Todd has moved Missouri up from 4th to 3rd.

However, Oracle, Charlie Cook is with you. Cook lists Talent as the fifth most vulnurable Republican Senator (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/06_senate_picture_changes_a_bi.html) after Chaffee in Rhode Island and DeWine in Ohio.

Oracle, unfortunately your political wisdom does not carry outside of Missouri. If so, you would know that Sherrod Brown has a very uphill chance against Dewine, due mostly to his long extremely liberal legislative career, with which Republicans will have plenty of material for attacks. The fact is, outside of the big cities Ohio is very socially conservative and Brown's views on the 2nd amendment, gay rights, and abortion will doom him there.

Dewine, by virtue of his relative independence, is in a better position than Talent. While Talent votes almost without fail for the president's agenda, Dewine has broken with the President on a number of key issues. It'll be harder to sweep him off in a Democratic tide.

Also, with Rhode Island, should Chafee survive the primary, it will be very difficult for Whitehouse to win. Whitehouse is simply not an engaging candidate and it's going to be very hard for him to attack Chafee. Chafee has been a very independent voice for the state of Rhode Island and has garnered support from a number of liberal interest groups.

For all of the reasons above (among others), your assessment of the rankings is off. McCaskill is a strong candidate, but maybe more importantly, Jim Talent is a weak incumbent. His record as Bush's lackey and not much else won't do him many favors in a state where Bush's approval ratings hover below 40%.

Except that the single most toxic political environment for Republicans this year is Ohio and the race showing the same polling results as the Missouri race with variation, but each candidate coming down to their opponent in the next poll.