Kaplan: "We're the men and women who cover politics in Washington ... and we're disappearing fast."

The biggest losers in these cutbacks, of course, are the citizens of Maine and the other states where newspapers have closed their Washington bureaus. My main gripe is that the loss of regional reporters just gives one more advantage to incumbents seeking reelection. Even in 2006, a year in which a Democratic tide swept Republicans out of office, 94 percent of incumbents in the House were reelected, as were 79 percent of those in the Senate, according to OpenSecrets.org,