The Morning After

Well, the media really dodged a bullet yesterday.

If the Republicans had defied the polls and somehow hung on to the House, every journalist, pundit, analyst and other assorted loudmouths who bought into the Democratic takeover scenario would be so embarrassed they would have to go into hiding for at least a couple of news cycles. Or justify why they weren't really wrong, that no one could have anticipated the breach of the electoral levees.

As for the Senate, well, I warned last week that we all might wake up this morning and not know the outcome. I wonder whether that will also be true when we wake up tomorrow morning. Gives new meaning to the phrase "too close to call."

After a slow start for television last night, the House flipped a few minutes before 11, at least according to NBC's projections. But for Virginia, Montana and other tight states, it was impossible for anyone to make a call.

Now it is the solemn duty of journalists to cope with all kinds of questions:

What will be the impact on the Democrats' pet legislation? The final two years of the Bush presidency? The 2008 elections? The war in Iraq? Nancy Pelosi? Rahm Emanuel? Denny Hastert? Karl Rove? Hillary? McCain? Obama? The House Republican staffers who will lose their jobs? The playing-to-the-base strategy? The future of democracy? The fate of the civilized world?

Man, there is so much to chew over that we could keep this going for the next month--and undoubtedly will, unless something better comes along, like another gay clergyman sex scandal or something of that ilk.

There's nothing reporters like better than a change in power, because it gives us winners and losers the opportunity to build up some new faces--profile-writers, on your marks!--until we inevitably discover they are flawed human beings and start tearing them down.

Besides, it had looked for awhile as if the Democrats would never win another election in our lifetime, which kind of takes all the suspense out of politics. But now there will be an actual handing over of the House speaker's gavel.

The analysis this morning is all in the nature of voters being mad as hell and not taking it anymore. There's all manner of analysis to catch you up on this morning:

N YT gets Rove's name in by the third paragraph: "Everything is different now for President Bush. The era of one-party Republican rule in Washington ended with a crash in yesterday's midterm elections, putting a proudly unyielding president on notice that the voters want change, especially on the war in Iraq.

"Mr. Bush now confronts the first Democratic majority in the House in 12 years and a significantly bigger Democratic caucus in the Senate that were largely elected on the promise to act as a strong check on his administration. Almost any major initiative in his final two years in office will now, like it or not, have to be bipartisan to some degree.