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But Cole, facing growing restiveness among Republicans about the party leadership, acknowledged the tumult in his party's ranks and suggested that his committee would look for a change in strategy. "When you lose three of these in a row you have to get beyond campaign tactics and take a hard look and ask if there is something wrong with your product," he said.

Advisers to McCain said they thought the problems that congressional Republicans were having did not translate into problems for McCain. But they said it steeled their resolve to run a campaign that distinguished McCain from both Bush and Congress, of which McCain has been a member since 1983. They said McCain would seek -- sometimes explicitly, sometimes not -- to distinguish himself from Bush and Congress by speaking critically of what he has described as excessive spending in Washington, as well on issues like the environment

"There's no question that the results in these special elections portend ominously for House Republicans, but they will have little impact on the presidential election campaign," said Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to McCain.

The special election results left Democrats and Republicans in rare agreement about one thing: Bush looms as a drag on Republicans.

Democratic leaders said a combination of anxiety among voters about the state of the country, combined with the prospect of an unusually heavy turnout of African-Americans, meant that many new Senate and House seats could be in play, including in states like North Carolina that just two years ago seemed out of reach for Democrats.

Obama, campaigning in Sterling Heights, Mich., said the outcome in the contest, to fill a "hard-core Republican seat," proved that strategy would not work.

"They lost it by 8 points, and they did everything they could," Obama said. "They ran ads with my face on it, and they said, 'Oh, you look at this, a former liberal, and his former pastor's said offensive things.' They were trying to do everything in the book to try to scare folks in Mississippi, and it didn't work," Obama said.

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