And the Results

Hmmm. My predictions seem to have been of the "close but no cigar" variety.

Voter turnout seems to have been very heavy, for one thing. Many of the tight races remained tight right up until the last votes were counted. The Democrats did indeed take the House, but by a somewhat wider margin than I thought. The Senate is still in contention as I write this, with only the Virginia race still undecided, but it looks from here as tho the Dems will take a two-seat majority in the Senate.

This of course means disaster for the Bush administration, as the subpoenas will no doubt begin flowing shortly after the reins are handed over in January. Don Rumsfeld has already resigned/been fired, probably in an attempt to head off some of the venom.

Meanwhile, Joe Leiberman handily won reelection as an independent, nicely embarassing the reality-impaired lefties who forced him out of the Democratic party. The lesson there is, once again, that the mainstream of the country is nowhere near as liberal as some like to believe.

What lies ahead? Well, if I were the boss of the Republicans, I'd say that for the next two years they should let the Dems do whatever they want. Let them raise taxes, pile on the spending, pull us out of Iraq, enact whatever goofy legislation they want. Just smile and say "You got it!" Then, in 2008, the choice between the two parties should be nice and clear. Plus, there would be no charges of obstructionism or gridlock to be leveled. The Repubs could just say "Okay America, you've had two years of unrepressed Democratic leadership. How's that workin' out for ya?"

I have every confidence that the rush back to conservative principles would be seismic in its proportions. But meanwhile, I'm just going to say congratulations to the Dems. They somewhat clumsily seized the moment and are ascendent once again. Probably just the shock the Republicans needed at this point, since some twelve years after the "Republican Revolution" they have quite clearly lost their way. Time to refocus, reexamine, do some belly-button contemplation, all that good stuff.

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In other news, Bill Whittle has a nice piece up on his blog that everyone should take a look at. Some good analysis there.

Day of Decision

Very quickly, as we all know, tomorrow is Election Day. Many heated races, much sturm und drang, talking heads on television about to melt down from the sheer excitement. So I want to go on record with my official predictions.

The Democrats will take a slim majority in the House - maybe ten seats, maybe fifteen, but probably not more than that. They will also take a razor-thin majority in the Senate - one or two seats.

Many races will end very closely, and the lawyers will be working overtime to sue their favorite candidate into office.

Allegations of voter fraud will be rampant. No matter who wins, the other side will scream about cheating.

Dems win, taxes go up, economy slows down, investigations into/possible impeachment of the President.

Now along about Wednesday or so, we'll see how I did.

I'm also interested in seeing if any of the super-tight races (according to current polling) wind up being blow-outs for one side or the other. See, as much as we talk about the big national issues and party implications, Congressional elections tend to be very local affairs. Everyone agrees that Congress is doing a bad job . . . except for my guy, of course. So we'll see if the power of incumbency makes any sort of difference this time around.

Still, I sense a mood of profound disgust out there among the public. They don't like what's been going on, they're tired of the partisan nonsense, they want things to change. Which leads me to my final prediction: fairly low voter turn-out, even by mid-term election standards.

We'll see.