What exactly would it take to be dissatisfied?

I'm happy to announce that Senator Elizabeth Dole, chair of the NRSC, is pleased with her performance:

"As the chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, it was Sen. Elizabeth Dole's job to keep the Senate in GOP hands. She couldn't.

So after two years in the Senate Republican leadership, Dole tumbles into the minority - back to her status as the freshman senator from North Carolina and, perhaps, out of favor among Republican activists frustrated by Tuesday's election results.

Dole said she's satisfied with her performance.

'I can sleep well at night knowing we did everything possible to hold the Senate,' she said in a telephone interview Thursday. 'All I know is I worked my head off, and that's all you can do.'"

She did all she could. Or did she? Let's review the fundraising of the key party committees for both sides (through 10/18):

• RNC - $208m, DNC - $119m; Republican advantage 75%
• NRCC - $152m, DCCC - $108m; Republican advantage 41%
• NRSC - $78m, DSCC - $104m; Republican "advantage" -25%

It isn't a stretch to think that even parity with the Democrats (i.e. an additional $26 million) would have saved at least one seat, and hence the majority. Regardless of what headwinds the Republicans faced this year, the NRSC faced the same ones as the other Republican committees. Yet the NRSC performed significantly worse, all while having fewer seats to defend than the Democrats.

Any way you cut it, Dole's leadership was an unmitigated disaster, and she deserves a fair amount of the blame for having lost the majority. I hope her colleagues remember that the next time she runs for a leadership position.

(By the way, I'll update my look at incumbent Republican Senators that were sitting on excess cash after all the spending reports are in for the final few weeks of the election.)