America votes: Democrats win control of the US House

[Malicious Intent]

Americans finally have a muslim in Congress. Keith Ellison, Minessota

Way to go Potato!

Why - what does he stand for that is so good?

[DudeAsInCool]

Why - what does he stand for that is so good?

He's a Democrat for starters :) Don't know much about his background

[KiwiCoromandel]

i`ve just been surfing the right-wing blogs and reading some heartland reaction to the electoral disaster (rummy gone, bolton next..then condi i would suggest) that george w bush has just handed down to the republican party....i can`t believe some of the fucking claptrap that i`m reading from these right-wing bloggers....

check this out.....

Be Afraid...Be Very Afraid.....

Five and a half hours of fitful sleep later (and unable to get back to sleep now), the strange new world does not look any less harrowing.

For starters, Jim Talent went down in Missouri, and Conrad Burns fell a thousand votes and change short in Montana, so the Donks made a clean sweep of all six competitive GOP senate seats and took that majority as well. You've heard of "salt in the wound"? This is Dutch cleanser.

No, I'm not going to hurl bitter recriminations at the voters. Those that voted for the Democrats made a grievous mistake that we're all going to have to pay for in a multitude of ways (including, for unknown thousands of us, our lives). But they made their choice. My only regret is that it isn't just they who have to live with the consequences.

And consequences there will be. The Democrats, already irredeemably corrupted by the Clinton detour, have spent the past six years spiralling down into sedition, treason, and extremism. They ran on nothing but hate and bile and bigotry. And now it has all been rewarded. They threw a seventy-one month temper tantrum, and it finally got them what they wanted: power. Not exactly the greatest message to send to a party that was in desperate need of reform.

Now that such loathsome people are reempowered, there is absolutely no reason to think that they won't go on as large and wide a rampage of radicalism and revenge as they possibly can. For the Dems, it's been twelve long years in the wildnerness, not just six, that this sulfuric neoBolshevism has been on high-rolling boil. It's like all the water behind Hoover Dam - they couldn't contain it now even if any of them were inclined to be magnanimous in victory.

The flood is coming. We'd better get that ark built, and fast.

As to fingerpointing at the GOP, well, all I can say is this is why you make hay while the sun shines. With a thirty seat majority in the House and ten in the Senate AND the White House, the Republicans had a rare opportunity to get things done that doesn't come along very often for them. What did Denny Hastert and Bill Frist do with it? Not nearly as much as they could have. The tax cuts were extended a couple of years, but not made permanent. They ran away from entitlements reform. They dithered on border enforcement until the last possible moment. The nearly let the Patriot Act get gutted. And, of course, there was "Sailor" McCain's "memo of understanding" that forswore any attempt to ban judicial confirmation filibusters and heralded both the pathetic GOP record on federal appellate court confirmations and last night's debacle.

Looking through my posts from that time, I find any number of pregnant comments, but I think this quote from Jonathan Rothenberg encapsulates everything quite nicely:

[W]hy bother voting Republican if it means blocking originalist judges and raising taxes? If a Republican majority in the House and the Senate follow up a surrender to Democrats on judicial nominations with tax increases, you can mark this day as the day the Republican majority began to disintegrate.

Last night the disintegration became official.

Now, then - can the GOP get it back in two years? Well, sure - theoretically. In reality, it's not bloodly likely.

First, now that they're back in the saddle, the Democrats are going to so stack the deck to entrench themselves that Republicans would need another "earthquake" like 1994 in order to dislodge them again. And you'll recall that that "earthquake" took FORTY YEARS to materialize on the House side and nearly a decade in the Senate. Flipping seats and overcoming incumbency isn't nearly as simple as trying on shirts - particularly when the Dems are so much better at insulating themselves from it.

Second, to employ one of my pet axioms, while the Democrats have always wanted power too much, last night was a case of the Republicans wanting it too little. Incumbency is, indeed, supposed to be difficult to overcome. If Pachyderms were as "corrupt" and "arrogant" as some have tried to depict them, one would have thought that they could have retained control for longer than just twelve years, "six year itch" or no "six year itch".

Third, to the degree that last night was a repudiation of President Bush - and by the time the Enemy Media is finished, there will BE no other interpretation - the atmosphere for 2008 will be so poisoned against Republicans that building even a modest "counter-wave" to correct the wrong-way movement of a day ago will be a formidable task.

Fourth, Republicans will absorb that poison and almost certainly flee leftward across the board. Don't expect them to react like the Democrats did after 2000, 2002, and 2004, striking a pose of hardline partisan defiance; such backbone simply isn't in them. They'll fall back into their old "go along to get along" pose like the glove-like fit of a pair of underwear to a man with five penises. As Hugh Hewitt observes this morning, "From the first day of the new Congress it is going to be a partisan slugfest or a GOP dismemberment." My money (at least until the Democrats confiscate it from me) is on the latter. And that's the surest bet you're ever gonna get.

So get used to it, my fellow conservatives. We had our run at the Promised Land and we blew it. We won't get a second chance, if ever, for a long, long time.

If the jihadis let us live that long, that is.

UPDATE: I can't resist bazookaing Double-H's lame attempt at a silver lining:

Hillary's path back to the White House is much more difficult with her party in the majority in the House, and much much more difficult if the Senate falls to Harry Reid's command as well. Clarity as to her party's fecklessness will be back within the first six months, and the GOP frontrunners - Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney - do not have to serve in the almost certain to be paralyzed Senate.

Hillary's path to the Democrat nomination will be unopposed. And with congressional majorities comes the power to set the agenda and turn the electorate even more back toward their psychopathic way of thinking. For all the conventional wisdom on our side of the aisle that she's polarizingly unelectable, we need to consider the unnervingly likely possibility that Mrs. Clinton may ride into the White House on a wave of popularity and acclimation. You can be damn sure that Giuliani or Romney (or McCain) won't do much to slow it down.

The Beltway-Manhattan media elite is now stuck "covering" Democratic majorities. Sure, they will go easy on them, but it is much more difficult to cover for a majority than a minority.

Oh, come on, Hugh. Did the Enemy Media labor under the onerous burden of covering for Bill Clinton? Hell, no - the reveled in it! They exulted in it! Here they had their own Nixon hanging around their necks like an anchor and they (and he) jiu-jitsued that into sky-high approval ratings that stuck it up our collective ass sideways. How will this be any different?

What you have to remember is that for the Left, the job is only partially accomplished. The billious agitation of this decade is only going to continue at an even greater fever pitch given that they've got the propaganda tools of congressional control added back into their mix. And all of it will be directed at so completely demolishing the GOP coalition that there will be no hope of stopping a Clinton restoration.

That's when the reign of terror will truly begin.

And it is a wonderful day for new media, especially talk radio. For two years we have had to defend the Congressional gang that couldn't shoot straight. Now we get to play offense.

Two words, Hugh: "Fairness Doctrine." To say nothing of "McCain-Feingold," which was passed by a GOP Congress and signed into law by a GOP president. After 2008 "playing offense" will become, by law, a thing of the past for the center-right. President Rodham will not tolerate it, and she'll have the Congress (and the courts) to back her up.

In the interim, I suppose we can give it a try. But we'll just be pissing into the wind. Last night's election results will be sold like they're Moses' stone tablets - concrete proof of America's "rejection" of "right-wing extremism". All our "offense" will be dismissed on that basis, minority Republicans won't take our advice on that basis, our frustration with them because of that will metastasize...oh, hell, you can see where this is going, cantcha?

The penultimate bottom line is we were entrusted with power and we squandered the opportunity. It is not a mistake the Democrats will repeat.

The bottom bottom line is that something catastrophic will have to happen to change the paradigm and swing the pendulum back in our direction.

And something or things will happen - the Dems (and al Qaeda and Iran and North Korea and...) will make sure of it. The only question is how much of an America there will be left to salvage.

God help us. God help us all.

ADDENDUM: And with that, I bid you adeiu until tomorrow. I've got meetings most of the day and thus wouldn't be online much anyway, and after five consecutive nights of five hours sleep, I doubt I'll last much past when I walk in the front door tonight.

But I really don't want to be online today, any more than I want to listen to talk radio or any other media outlet. Maybe I'm funny that way, but when my sports teams lose I turn off the TV before the post-game interviews and analysis. Heck, I turn it off once the game is out of reach. Why? Because I know my team is going to lose and I feel no great obligation to be a witness to it. Just ask my son about SuperBowl XL. I sure as hell didn't sit through the damned Lombardi trophy presentation (okay, if the refs had been up on the platform with Dan Rooney and Bill Cowher, maybe...), and I'm not about to endure all the undecorous gloating from the DisLoyal Opposition.

Life is going to be difficult enough going forward. I - we - are going to need all the morale we can get.

[DudeAsInCool]

Here is the President's first press conference after the election. I found Bush to be remarkably conciliatory towards the Democrats, and seemly willing to work with them.

[KiwiCoromandel]

Now BUSH loses SENATE....!!!!!!

Democrats wrested control of the Senate from Republicans with an upset victory in Virginia, giving the party complete domination of Capitol Hill for the first time since 1994.

Jim Webb's narrow win over incumbent Senator George Allen gave Democrats their 51st seat in the 100-seat Senate, an astonishing turnabout at the hands of voters unhappy with Republican scandal and unabated violence in Iraq.

Allen was the sixth Republican incumbent senator defeated in yesterday's elections.

The Senate had teetered at 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans for most today, with Virginia hanging in the balance.

Webb's victory ended Republican hopes of eking out a 50-50 split, with Vice President Dick Cheney wielding tie-breaking authority.

About half the 134 election localities said they had completed their post-election canvassing and nearly all had counted outstanding absentees. Most were expected to be finished by Friday.

The new count showed Webb with 1,172,538 votes and Allen with 1,165,302, a difference of 7,236.

Virginia has had two statewide vote recounts in modern history, but both resulted in vote changes of no more than a few hundred votes.

An adviser to Allen, speaking on condition of anonymity because his boss had not formally decided to end the campaign, said the senator wanted to wait until most of canvassing was completed before announcing his decision, possibly by tomorrow evening.

The adviser said that Allen was disinclined to request a recount if the final vote spread was similar to that of election night.

President George Bush earlier put a brave face on the elections, ruefully taking blame for the "thumping" his Republicans took but saving one of his sharpest barbs for his political guru.

After a strained start, Bush struck a relaxed, reflective and wry tone through most of a 44-minute White House press conference, one day after weathering what was arguably the worst defeat of his political life.

"I thought we were going to do fine yesterday. Shows what I know. But I thought we were going to be fine in the election," Bush shrugged.

"Goes to show I should not try punditry."

Bush offered a colorful campaign post mortem, telling reporters: "If you look at race by race, it was close. The cumulative effect, however, was not too close. It was a thumping."

"I'm obviously disappointed with the outcome of the election and, as the head of the Republican Party, I share a large part of the responsibility," Bush said, now officially a less-influential, "lame duck" leader in the last two years of his mandate.

Bush drew gales of laughter when asked who was winning his book-reading contest with his long-time political strategist Karl Rove and he replied: "I'm losing. I obviously was working harder on the campaign than he was."

"He's a faster reader," Bush added quickly.

Rove, the architect of his White House victories in 2000 and 2004, did not crack a smile.

Bush repudiated his own campaign attacks on opposition Democrats as content to let terrorists attack the United States, and signalled that he did not bear any grudges against those who called him "incompetent" or "dangerous".

"This isn't my first rodeo," he said.

"I understand when campaigns end and I know when governing begins, and I'm going to work with people of both parties."

That observation came days after Bush whipped Republican faithful into a pre-election frenzy with charges that "terrorists win and America loses" if Democrats were to take control of the US Congress and accusations that Democrats were not as interested in preventing terrorist attacks on the United States as he was.

"People say unfortunate things at times. But if you hold grudges in this line of work, you're never going to get anything done. And my intention is to get some things done," he said.

"They care about the security of this country like I do," said Bush.

"No leader in Washington is going to walk away from protecting the country. We have different views on how to do that, but their spirit is such that they want to protect America. That's what I believe."

Perhaps the tensest exchange came when one reporter rephrased his campaign-trail attacks to mean that Democrats would be "about being happy that America gets attacked before responding" - visibly angering Bush.

"No, I didn't say, 'happy'," said Bush, who curtly cut off the reporter's efforts to follow up and moved on to the next question.

In his opening statement, the president played off his frequent stump-speech charge that overconfident Democrats were already measuring their new congressional offices and planning how to decorate them.

Referring to all-but-anointed Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Bush quipped: "In my first act of bipartisan outreach since the election, I shared with her the names of some Republican interior decorators who can help her pick out the new drapes in her new offices."

Pelosi told CNN: "We're not about wanting to get even.

"The campaign is over. Democrats are ready to lead, prepared to govern, and absolutely willing to work in a bipartisan way in partnership, not partisanship, with the Republicans in the Congress and with the president of the United States."

source:AFP

[KiwiCoromandel]

yeehaa!!!..a CLEAN SWEEP...

[KiwiCoromandel]

Democrats win control of Senate.....

BREAKING NEWS....

NBC, MSNBC and news services

Updated: 9:38 p.m. ET Nov. 8, 2006

WASHINGTON - Democrats wrested control of the Senate from Republicans Wednesday with an upset victory in Virginia, giving the party complete domination of Capitol Hill for the first time since 1994, as NBC News reported that Democrat Jim Webb was the apparent winner.

Webb’s apparent squeaker win over incumbent Sen. George Allen effectively gave Democrats their 51st seat in the Senate, an astonishing turnabout at the hands of voters unhappy with Republican scandal and unabated violence in Iraq. Allen was the sixth Republican incumbent senator defeated in Tuesday’s elections.

The Senate had teetered at 50 Democrats and independents, 49 Republicans for most of Wednesday, with Virginia hanging in the balance. Webb’s victory ended Republican hopes of eking out a 50-50 split, with Vice President Dick Cheney wielding tie-breaking authority.

The presumed Democratic majority counts on the support of two independent senators who have declared that they will caucus with the Democrats.

Earlier Wednesday, Democrats ousted Sen. Conrad Burns in Montana. Late victories padded their day-old majority in the House.

Bush laments ‘thumpin’ ’

“It was a thumpin’,” President Bush told reporters at a White House news conference after Americans sick of scandal and weary of war brought down the Republican House majority and pushed Democrats to toward their takeover of the Senate as well. “It’s clear the Democrat Party had a good night.”

Exultant Democrats won an early victory Wednesday when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned under fire over the troubled war in Iraq despite Bush’s flat refusal to fire him.

Said newly re-elected Sen. Joseph Lieberman: “Thanks, Don, you've served the country, but really we need somebody new there.”

In the House, Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said he will not seek to be elected his party’s House minority leader when Democrats take control in January.

For the GOP, it was an election that started out grim and got only grimmer. First, voters brought down the Republican House majority after 12 years in power and gave Democrats a majority of governorships for the first time in just as long. Then Senate control, too, slipped away.

Tester apparently prevails in Montana

After an overnight vote count in Montana, Democrat Jon Tester rode to victory over Burns, a three-term senator whose campaign was shadowed by a series of self-made missteps and his ties to Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist at the center of an influence-peddling investigation.

“One hundred thousand miles and 15 hours later, here we did it,” said Tester, a flattop-wearing state senator and organic farmer who lost three fingers in a meat grinder.

Burns said he was not ready to concede, but projections showed him losing in a squeaker.

Tester’s race against GOP incumbent Burns was delayed by equipment glitches, a heavy turnout and the narrowness of his lead — under 3,000 votes.

Burns, 71 and first elected in 1988 as a folksy, backslapping outsider, had been under siege because of his ties to Abramoff and because of his own gaffes — including an incident in which he cursed at firefighters.

A candidate in Montana can request a recount at his own expense if the margin is within half of a percent. If the margin is less than one-quarter of a percent, the state and counties pick up the tab....

[slum_goddess]

I found Bush to be remarkably conciliatory towards the Democrats, and seemly willing to work with them.

no shit--loooooo-zer! he knows when he's down. plus the presser i watched last night totally didn't confirm w/the official transcript. as usual they cleaned it up for him, making him sound smarter and more coherent than he really is.

one example; he went he ‘can divide the country between red and blue.'

well no shit, Sherlock--that's what you did. i was rolling here, people were phoning me from all over going 'did he just say that?' the damn transcript took hours to come up on the gov site and of course, they changed it.

LOOOOOOOOO-ZER!

Schadenfreude is sweeeeet!

Bill Hicks from over ten years ago: the republican beast is fuckin dead! LOLOLOLOL!

[method77]

Here is the President's first press conference after the election. I found Bush to be remarkably conciliatory towards the Democrats, and seemly willing to work with them.

what did you expect him to say? "Fuck them, I am the decider"?

He is a politician. He says what people want to hear.

[method77]

Why - what does he stand for that is so good?

US has a large muslim population. It's about time they get represented in the House

[KiwiCoromandel]

US has a large muslim population. It's about time they get represented in the House

While Keith Allison is no doubt an excellent and upcoming progressive candidate and politician and will do well... his selection to the democratic party ticket is largely symbolic....while certainly a very potent symbol of the democrats stated intention to be more inclusive of america`s ethnically and culturally diverse society in the political process...he mainly represents to the democrat party an excellent example of cultural diversity and tolerance..he is a muslim and he is colored..and he has succeeded..thereby demonstrating something social democratic and mainstream center-left political parties in the West pride themselves on....tolerance of other races and cultures..their ideas and points of view....something george bush and the republican party would do well to consider when they start their soul-searching and try to rebuild their shattered policy platform for 2008...

[DudeAsInCool]

what did you expect him to say? "Fuck them, I am the decider"?

He is a politician. He says what people want to hear.

You dont think its remarkable that the day after the election Rumsfeld is fired and the President is talking about bills he (used to oppose) and he is now is going to pass--and this from an arrogant SOB who who listened to no one before... well, I do.

I had no idea what to expect--could have been more gridlock. Cheney said it didnt matter what the voters said, it was full speed ahead in Iraq--and that was just days before the election

[DudeAsInCool]

Rep. John Murtha (who started the anti-war campaign) on Bush's press conference:

Yesterday I heard the same old rhetorical garbage in the President's press conference. America remains a nation at war, but the enemy that attacked us on September 11th is not the enemy we are fighting in Iraq. As of Tuesday, the President can no longer mask an Iraqi civil war as part of the real war on terrorism.

This election was a referendum on the President's disastrous course in Iraq, and the American people clearly had ENOUGH.

Source

[slum_goddess]

The White House recently cropped that very picture and took out the "Mission Accomplished" section--if you to to the White House website, you can go back to that date and see the change...

why that's just Führerific!

what did you expect him to say? "Fuck them, I am the decider"?

yes, actually i did--at least that's what he was thinkin'

[Malicious Intent]

US has a large muslim population. It's about time they get represented in the House

That is like saying it is good to have Condi in power because she gives black people representation.

My MP is Scottish and I have no idea what his religion is. What is important to me is how he votes, and that is why I vote for him to represent me.

[DudeAsInCool]

The US is a melting pot. So when various ethnicities or religious folks gets elected, that aspect is pointed out. That doesnt mean that they simply voted for the guy just because he was a muslim.

[method77]

I never said that

[DudeAsInCool]

I never said that

Never said what? Or were you responding to MI?

[method77]

I never said that I likde him being voted just because he was muslim. I'm sure that people had their reasons for voting for him and I like the fact that he is muslim