“What happened last night in Florida was really scary,” the Democratic National Committee wrote its online donors Wednesday afternoon. The fundraising pitch was referring to the role millions in outside spending had played in their Saint Petersburg-area special election loss Tuesday night. But the scary thing for them was the result, not the money.

The seat being contested this week was in a fair-fight district President Obama had carried twice. Democrats spent more money (including all that outside cash), and yet their hand-picked, well-known and experienced candidate lost to a corporate lobbyist who was freshly divorced, with young girlfriend in tow, and who (as it came out amid the campaign’s dirty laundry) had killed someone in a car accident 25 years ago. (The accident wasn’t deemed his fault, but you can imagine what such a story does in the last weeks of a heated campaign.) Not only that, but a third-party libertarian spoiler managed to draw an impressive 5 percent of the vote.