Kerrey returned from a jog the next morning and heard the news on TV: Carnahan’s plane had gone down, and no one had survived the crash. Although Kerrey hadn’t known Carnahan long, he started crying. Cleland was eating breakfast when an aide found him. “I felt like I was back in Vietnam,” Cleland said. “One minute your buddy is with you in a foxhole, and the next minute he’s dead.”

Reticent and morally upright, the 66-year-old Carnahan was deeply mourned in a part of the country that has little patience for shifty or timid politicians. His sudden death eerily recalled another Missouri crash, in 1976, when Rep. Jerry Litton was killed on the night he won the Democratic Senate nomination. Just weeks from the election, Carnahan had been locked in a tight race with his longtime nemesis and another local giant, the conservative John Ashcroft. The two didn’t like each other much, but Missourians seemed to like them both. Several thousand people turned out for Carnahan’s memorial service, the largest such gathering in the state since Harry Truman’s death.

In Washington stunned Democrats felt the loss politically as well as personally. The party has spent much of the fall plotting to regain control over both houses of Congress. For all the talk about healing the partisan breach in Washington, both parties know that the success of a new administration may well depend on who controls the Capitol. There’s a fair chance the House will swing with whoever wins the White House. The NEWSWEEK Poll shows a trend in House races toward the Democrats, who seem to be winning the air war over issues like prescription drugs. More elusive is the Senate, which is why Democrats have been pouring twice as much money as ever before–more than $50 million–into races throughout the country, hoping to close a six-seat gap with the GOP. It’s a reach at best, and Missouri was crucial to any scenario. Now, with Carnahan suddenly gone, the Democrats’ dream seems to have faded.

Even as they grieved for a friend, Democrats were trying to figure out what to do about a key election that now seemed lost. There was much talk last week that voters could still choose Carnahan, whose name must remain on the ballot. Democrats were thinking that the state’s reluctant new governor, Roger Wilson, could announce whom he would appoint to replace Carnahan if the dead man won; speculation centered on his widow, Jean. That way voters could still choose Carnahan on Election Day, knowing that they were, in fact, voting for his replacement.

It’s unlikely that enough Missourians could be persuaded to pull the lever next to the name of a dead man–even one they so respected. But there’s even less chance that the Democrats could regain the Senate without winning in Missouri. There are several close Senate races, and with all the soft money flowing in from both parties to pay for issue ads, they may hinge more on those national issues–like taxes and Social Security–than on local concerns. Democrats will likely pick up some seats this time round, in states like New Jersey and Minnesota. But in order to take back the Senate, without Carnahan they’d have to win close races in Virginia, New York (the Clinton-Lazio title fight), Nebraska, Florida, Delaware, Washington and Montana–at least. “It would pretty much take some sort of political tidal wave,” says Stuart Roy, a GOP spokesman.

Even if all that came to pass, Democrats would still have to handle the Lieberman problem. Because the Connecticut Democrat has chosen to run for the Senate and the vice presidency simultaneously, Joseph Lieberman would have to resign his seat if Gore wins. Connecticut’s Republican governor, John Rowland, would then get to appoint a successor. That means that if by some chance the Democrats were to pull even in the Senate with Gore in the White House, they’d still end up in the minority.

That’s fueled some ugly feelings within the party. Some Democrats on the Hill are privately furious at Lieberman. They say he’s selfishly clinging to the seat, undermining any chance the party has of reclaiming the Senate. Lieberman says he has his own reasons for refusing to give up the Senate bid: if he quit now, his successor would be picked by the state’s Democratic committee, rather than by the voters, thereby subverting the democratic process. It’s probably a moot argument now anyway. Senate Democrats lost their best shot at taking back the Senate when Mel Carnahan’s plane plummeted to earth. Missouri lost a lot more.