All Hail the Democratic Party Organizations!

Mandatory Opening Rhetorical Hallelujah:
As Jim Talent said in his concession, and George Allen Jr. in his non-concession, "Thank God!"

"It's the End of the World as We Know It, and I Feel Fine!"--R.E.M., 1987

For the first time in a long time, we really won one. The 30-seat gain in the House is not record territory (best since 1974), but in today's big-spending, incumbent-friendly system a very impressive result. The six-seat gain in the Senate was at the outer edge of the probability distribution and, to me, was even more impressive. The Democrats won 24 of 33 races held in the Senate! That's 73%, in House terms a veto-proof 318 seats (vs. the reality of 230-something).

This sets Senate Democrats up well for the next election; the House outlook may not be as promising. The several scandal seats among the House pickups will be vulnerable next time around. Of course, the House will be working from about 15 seats above the minimum majority, while the bare majority in the Senate is vulnerable at any moment to sickness, scandal, or some sort of Liebermania.

The gains in the governors' offices and statehouses were all that we hoped for and more. In the House races and in gubernatorial elections, the Democrats showed that they could break out of the blue-state urban ghettoization that recent elections suggested. Here is Howard Dean's vindication, and I see no need to modify the tetrahedral party power structure that has emerged (Senate Dems, House Dems, and Dem Governors, with Dean supporting all and none in the pyramid) until someone breaks from the pack and wins the '08 nomination.

Two phenomena impressed most: one being the half-dozen or so surprise winners (the hallmark of a tidal wave victory) the DCCC came up with, and the other was the breadth of states represented in the House seats picked up by the Democrats. Yes, there was consolidation of control in blue states New York and Connecticut, and similar routing of Republican moderates in districts within swing states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. But there were also two seats in Arizona, three in Indiana (!), and ones in North Carolina, Texas (DeLay's old), Kentucky, and Kansas.

Then there was the incredible record of Democrats holding their own in the Senate, House, and Governors' seats. That is the answer to the argument that the results were merely "the Republicans and George Bush imploding".

Yet there was that implosion, that North Korean-magnitude muffled blast as the Tyranny of Bushite Misrule ends with a hidden blast, a futile attempt at suicide bombing that barely escaped the White House bunker. (Rumsfeld draped himself over the IED and absorbed much of the shock wave; the shrapnel passed right through, though.)

The 3-D nature of this second-term Administration (Dumb Duck Dubya) is now a reality apparent to all. There will be no more admitted Bushites permitted in the Republican party as it operates beyond the Beltway, and the late-campaign Red-state show tour of the President is the equivalent of the advertisers' nightmare: what if they ran it up the flag, and no one saluted?

In our local focus race, NM-01, Republican Heather Wilson's position surged late in the night and she's ended up 1000 votes or so ahead, with a few precincts somehow still not reported. Wilson needs to apologize for her campaign before we will accept Patricia Madrid's concession (not offered as yet). The justification both had--Wilson for her slagging, Madrid for freezing up in the key debate-- was that so much apppeared to be at stake.

The reason why NM-01 gets off the hook from massive scrutiny (true of several other races, still) was the superb execution of Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer in the House and Senate Campaign offices. They came at Rove's forces from too many fronts--fairly little need for tactical defense, and give them credit for sensing that but still not losing any of their own seats--and eventually the pressure broke down their forces in several geographic areas. The win of both Houses (I had that at 12% four weeks out) qualifies as a strategic victory, in boxing terms a knockout. Rove's reputation for flawless strategy takes a hit, and Libby Dole (9-for-33) takes it on the chin for the team. At least Tom Reynolds could make sure he had enough $$$ for NY-26, which he salvaged for himself.

Prediction Reliability Assessment

We were pretty transparently sandbagging on the House number. The key for me was to make sure that I could only do better than expected, for once. On Election Day, once all the effort had been expended and the self-deceptive quality of making myself expect the worst had used up all its benefit, I was considering bumping up the seat gain into safe territory (16 or more), as I could not deny there were plenty of targets of opportunity (though I had no idea that half or more would come through, and that most would indeed end up being serious challenges). But I wanted to stay on the low side of expectations regarding the House.

These were my five favorite House pickups of the night:
1) NH-01--no one saw that one coming (second choice for longshot winner would be MN-01).
2) NC-11--Heath Shuler was too a good football player!
3) KN-02--Jim Ryun reminds us of his famous foldup in the 1968 Olympics.
4) AZ-05--Everyone hates J.D. Hayworth now that he's lost.
5) IN-08--First pickup of the night, a 61-39% thumping that still took 2 hours to call (simply because they, like me, must have expected that the margin would narrow sharply. I think they wanted to be sure they didn't get taken in by the exit polls this time.)

In the Senate, we foresaw the basic idea of the contest and the themes of the evening, but we got the characters and their roles a little mixed up: the disappointment was Tennessee, not Missouri; the potentially challenged race became Virginia, not Tennessee; the clutch win with the late urban returns was Missouri, not Tennessee. Those were the three races we got wrong, from the start; we had the rest right, all along.

The Most Definitive Sign of Comprehensive Bushite Defeat

It's Rumsfeld, of course. The decision may have been made long ago, and he may have been on life-support in his office for months, just waiting for the right moment to pull his plug. Still, it's a good move, for which its time had come.