BobHarris.com - An historic shutout

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An historic shutout

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Wednesday, 08 November 2006

Top of my head, just woke up to do a morning radio show at an ungodly hour, organizing my thoughts:

• The good guys' win is even more one-sided than it looks at first glance.

If the numbers stay as they are (pending recounts, etc.), here's the final scoreboard, assuming I haven't missed something:

Not one Democratic incumbent lost in the Senate.
Not one Democratic incumbent lost in the House of Representatives.
Not one Democratic incumbent lost in any state Governorship.

All told, 504 major offices were at stake tonight.

Not one changed hands going Democrat to Republican.

I've looked, and while there have been a handful of past elections where a greater number of seats changed hands, I can't find a more one-sided repudiation of a ruling party in American history. (Although I fully expect someone out there reading this will, about five seconds after I hit the "publish" button.)

• Ironically, Joe Lieberman may become the most powerful man in the Senate.

Fredo couldn't even win his own primary, but thanks to GOP support for his Independent campaign (since he lost the Democrat primary, his party was essentially Liebermans for Lieberman), he's returning to the Senate. He promises to caucus with the Democrats, so if Tester and Webb win, he'll be part of a 51-49 majority -- but if he defects to the Republicans, he gives them a 50-50 tie which Dick Cheney constitutionally breaks. So suddenly Lieberman becomes the swing vote, possibly for the next two solid years.

If that's not a strong argument for going to a parliamentary system, I don't know what is.

• The GOP danced with the nutjob that brought them.

GOP scammer-cum-Congresswoman-cum-flailing Senate candidate Katherine Harris lost by over a million votes to a Democratic Senate incumbent who was entirely beatable.

But Miss "I never wore blue eye shadow!" ran one of the most pathetic campaigns in history, punctuated by questionable financing, laughable gaffes, and increasingly odd behavior. Eventually, she couldn't even keep her own staff, and every single major newspaper in the entire state endorsed her opponent.

You could almost see the bucket of water hitting the Wicked Witch, followed by a lot of "I'm melting! I'm melting!" and dissolving into the floor.

If the GOP had mustered a less obvious wackjob, the Democrats would hold no better than the 50-50 situation, giving Republicans continued control over the Senate.

• No, really. The GOP danced with the nutjob that brought them.

Limbaugh. Missouri. Stem cells. Narrow margin, toss-up race. Rush mocks a courageous and much-beloved actor with a history of bipartisanship.

The Viagra-smuggling Oxycontin addict's preferred candidate never leads outside the margin of error again. One more Senate seat thrown to the Democrats.

• No, really, seriously. The GOP totally danced with the nutjob that brought them.

"Macaca." And now Allen looks likely to lose Virginia by less than one-half of one percent of the vote.

This makes a total of three Senate seats the GOP lost simply by acting like collossal pricks.

Pretty breathtaking.

• Diversity seems up. So it's an even worse day to be Bill O'Reilly.

First female Speaker of the House.

First Muslim in the U.S. Congress.

First black state governor in Massachusetts history (and only the second in American history).

(This last reminds me of a shameful fact: when I was studying for Jeopardy!, I memorized all of the black Senators in U.S. history. No big deal -- you can count them on one hand.)

• Your vote may not always matter much -- but you never know when it could.

At the moment, it looks like Democrats will probably carry Virginia, so control of the Senate comes down only to Montana. As I write this, Jon Tester's lead over Conrad ("Montgomery") Burns is only 1735 votes, with 99% of the ballot counted.

The key chunk of the vote is Yellowstone County, which historically leans to the GOP. It's also where the GOP incumbent where Conrad Burns begain his career.

How many votes would Burns have typically picked up in Yellowstone County, if the vote ran according to historic patterns? Certainly more than the 1222 he picked up last night. And very likely more than the he would have needed to throw the state in the red column.

But Yellowstone County went only mildly Republican, instead of over-the-top Republican. Jon Tester got 3880 more Democratic votes than John Kerry did in 2004. And that's the margin of victory in the state.

Which means that control over the United States Senate ultimately comes down to Democratic voters in one Montana county who thought it was more important than usual to vote.

• When a few votes make a difference, that difference might be enormous.

Control over the Senate determines which party leads the Judiciary Committee, which decides whether Supreme Court nominations can reach the floor for a vote.

The next judges nominated will likely replace Stevens (age 86), Ginsberg (age 73), Kennedy (age 70), Souter (age 67), or Breyer (age 68). These are all of the moderate and liberal justices on the court.

The four others are all hardline conservatives. (Average age: 59. Granted, Scalia is 70. But he drinks the blood of Girl Scouts, and thus will never die.)

So a handful of people in one Montana county may have also just influenced the fundamental nature of our society for a generation.

So that's what I think this election means -- at least, before I've had my coffee. So take this pretty lightly.