Post-Election Musings

Just some impressions from watching MSNBC's coverage of the election:

o Wow, I can't believe how much ass we kicked in the House. That's amazing, and way beyond my expectations. And it looks like we may have actually taken the Senate, at least until the Republicans break the glass on Emergency Backup Republican Joe Lieberman. I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed that that evil, phony bastard won. It's really the only blot on the election for me.

o Pleasantly surprised to see Jason Altmire knock off Melissa Hart - I really didn't think he had much of a chance.

o Rick Santorum's concession speech surprisingly classy, pledging his support to Casey, saying very complimentary things about him, and urging his supporters to applaud and "give it up" for Casey. Could just be because Casey is a Republican...

o Media narrative is, as expected, that Democratic victories are due to Schumer and Emanuel's brilliance at finding and backing centrist DLC-style candidates, not those Wacky Lefties that scare Main Street America. Looking forward to MyDD and FDL doing some serious debunking on this.

o Enjoyed Joe Scarborough mildly flipping out on Chris Matthews for saying he had a Republican/conservative bias, and insisting that for the last two years he's been more critical of Republicans than Democrats. ("Go back and look at my transcripts! Look at them, I say!") Whether true or not (I'm guessing not, although it is true that he's been critical of BushCo), it's interesting that he took such pains to make that point, and he seemed genuinely pissed off about it.

o Could have done without Chris Matthews badgering Howard Dean (who seemed a bit off his game) about the Democratic strategy for Iraq. Dean didn't really have a very good response - "I'm not playing that game" sounded more like something Bush would say.

o Could have done without Rahm Emanuel entirely. Illinois voters, can you help me out with this in 2008? Thanks much.

o I wish I could comment on the Mehlman interview, but I was on the phone. I'll just assume it was wanktastic and horrible, and that he found a way to spin this election as a tremendous victory for the Republicans and the Magical GOTV Machine. ("You see, Chris, there are 200 House seats that the Democrats totally failed to pick up. This is a massive repudiation of the Democrat party and the nutroots.")

o I didn't stick around long enough to get final results on the election initiatives, but it looked like those were turning out pretty badly, with lots of anti-gay marriage/anti-civil union initiatives winning handily (Tucker Carlson: "Americans just don't like gay marriage." Bite me.). While this is disappointing on its face, I find it intriguing and encouraging that it did not translate into success for Republican candidates - I remember 2004 when the anti-gay marriage initiatives were used as a GOP GOTV (GOTGOPV?) tool.

o I stayed away from blog comments last night because I didn't think I really had anything to add, and I didn't really feel like trying to keep up. I'm curious what the Official Troll Talking Points are, though. "Democrats cheated"? "Just wait until 2008"? "Ned Lamont lost, ha ha loosers!"? "..."? I, for one, look forward to saying "Thanks for 2006!" at every possible opportunity.

o Oh, and if the official Republican line does turn out to be that the Democrats stole the election, then they should be all about the election reform now, right? Right?

I'm sure some other stuff will probably occur to me later, so I may be updating this post.