In my morning-after election analysis, I noted that it would be very difficult for the Republicans to take the House......

If Hegel runs for President, I will support him. Good man, decorated combat vet, hard worker, actually reads bills before he signs them. I am on record many times saying Reagan was a great president I was proud to vote for.

I have been highly critical of John Kerry and numerous other Democrats, if you think I feel they can do no wrong, you are not reading carefully enough. I just think that Democrats suck less than the disgrace the GOP has become under Bush.

Hopefully rational people in both parties can seize this opportunity to abandon party dogma

so, just how far does your bipartisanship extend? So far all I've seen out of you is criticism for the republicans. Meanwhile the democrats can do no wrong? PPPPpppppppppppppth.

Cheney & Rush have told Bit to be terrified of "the far left" and he is doing what he has been told to do.

Hopefully rational people in both parties can seize this opportunity to abandon party dogma, and begin to work to solve our country's problems. Its what the founding fathers intended.

Divided government worked very well in this country just a few short years ago. I am saddened to see that some people in this country actually seem to despise the democratic process, but I think it just might work in spite of them...

I’ve certainly heard no Democrats calling for a “far left agenda”.

Perhaps some reading of the words of John Conyers , Dirty DIngle and Harry Reid would be helpful to that end.

Bithead, perhaps you shouldn't be issuing warnings today about what the Democrats should heed. The Republicans got clocked last night, not the Democrats. I've certainly heard no Democrats calling for a "far left agenda".

Maybe today is a day for the "far right" to be doing a little soul searching, not the "far left". Maybe next time the Republicans can try to come up with something a little better than the "John Kerry hates the troops" strategy.

Now, had Rhode Island for example go on from Lincoln Chaffee directly to the reincarnation of Kucinich, Bowers might actually have a point.... but in no case did that kind of shift happen.

Bowers, and the rest of the far left had best heed that point, and the measurement of the refferendums in the various districts. As Michelle points up today:

Property rights initiatives limiting eminent domain won big. MCRI, the anti-racial preference measure, passed resoundingly. Congressman Tom Tancredo, the GOP's leading warrior against illegal immigration--opposed by both the open-borders Left and the open-borders White House--won a fifth term handily. Gay marriage bans won approval in 3 states. And as of this writing, the oil tax initiative, Prop. 87--backed by deep-pocketed Hollywood libs, is trailing badly in California.

Those kinds of voting patterns are hardly to be consdiered Mainline Democrat, and certainly not the kind of Democrat voter Bowers would approve of.

Tie this with the idea that the approval ratings of the Democrats have been polling lower than the Republicans in the last couple years, even up to and including this last week, and clearly, there's a danger for the Democrats in taking this vote to mean even a partial approval for their far leftist agenda. The data coming in from last nights voting suggests that it's an approval the Democarts simply don't have.

I hope the GOP moves towards returning to being the party I was proud to belong to under Ronald Reagan. Chuck Hegel strikes me as the man who might take it there.

My message to Nancy Pelosi is don't let it go to your head. The American people are looking for some humility from their leaders right now.

That the voters went in a different direction than I’d have preferred is, almost by definition, disappointing.

What you should really be disappointed in isn't the outcome, but the performance of the GOP-eers in the last 4 years. No way, no how did they deserve to win. You can't count on your opponent to suck every time.And even though the Dems did suck the GOP was even worse.

That helps. But the 6 or so precincts that had already reported in the city totaled only 7,000 votes or so, which didn't lead me to hope for much from the remaining precinct. Whereas the counties' totals thus far were in the 20,000s.

Anyway, it's not like I *want* Allen to win. I'm just being a self-hating Democrat, I guess ...

--Okay, Fairfax City is 100% in, with 8,083 votes, 4,538 of those for Webb. All we are now waiting on is the 2 precincts from "James City County" (so what is it?) and the 1 from Isle o' Wight, which are not likely, as Mark noted, to provide a 7,000-vote surplus for Allen. How many Virginians are serving in Iraq & Afghanistan?