Note: the timestamp on this post went screwy as a result of an updating error on my part. Due to permission limits I can’t fix it without John’s input.
The DCCC election site is like crack. The latest news: Chocola and Sodrel go down in Indiana, Nancy Johnson goes down in Connecticut and Joy Padgett (Bob Ney’s last-minute replacement) goes down in Ohio. Let’s say right now that if the Republicans get smashed in Indiana then they have a long night ahead of them.
And yes, if the Dems have a record-breaking night then I will gladly admit to being wrong. If I end up being so wrong that nobody in their right mind should ever listen to me again, that is to say neocon wrong, then so much the better.
***Update***
Charlie Bass goes down in New Hampshire. Think the robocalls had anything to do with it? Just kidding, I’m not getting into those again tonight. Seriously, John.
Election night beer blogging – Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA. Great hooch for a decent price.
***Update***
Sherwood the strangler and Crazy Curt Weldon both go down in Pennsylvania. Let this be a lesson for future candidates: do not strangle your mistress and do not be completely f*cking insane and run a criminal family empire at the same time.
***Update***
Schuler (D) beats incumbent Taylor ( R) in NC. Jeebus. Too bad I’m out of popcorn.
10:53 PM Joe Negron, also known as Mark Foley on the ballot in his Florida district, has conceded to Democratic opponent Tim Mahoney. This race went right down to the wire, so we should assume that Mahoney has a year and a half to do something really impressive or else the district will revert back to its usual Republican status.
11:06 PM Clay Shaw ( R) loses in Florida and John Sweeney (R, party guy, alleged wife beater) loses in New York. Was anybody even watching the Shaw race?
11:09 PM Dems clinch the House. My feeling at this point is that neither Webb nor Ford will win their Senate races and Tester is a tossup in Montana which means to me that the Senate remains out of reach. Nonetheless, here comes subpoena power.
11:38 PM Melissa Hart goes down in PA. Talk about close to home – I handed her a bundle of checks while volunteering with the Roddey race for County Executive in 1999. She seemed alright at the time, but anybody who votes with Bush as often as she did needs some personal time to think about things.
11:52 PM Jim Webb pulls slightly ahead of Felix Allen. How many times can I be wrong in one night? Only time will tell.
12 Midnight Curtains for Jim Ryun ( R) in KS-02. Kansas. In other news Wolf Blitzer has pledged to stand in front of a blue screen and filibuster until control of the Senate is decided. If that doesn’t move VA vote counters to get off their kiesters and work I don’t know what will.
12:06 AM Say goodnight to J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ)
12:45 AM Corker beats Ford in Tennessee. No big surprise there. Meanwhile McCaskill leads Jim Talent, Jim Webb leads Felix Allen and Tester leads Conrad Burns. I still won’t give in to irrational hope, but prove me wrong guys.
1 AM I’m going to bed. Speaker Pelosi will have endless hours of fun playing with her new subpoena power, marginal Repubs will find this a great time to retire and “wave” Dems have a year and a half to convince their conservative districts to keep them on for another term. The Webb-Allen race seems destined for a recount so don’t count on knowing who controls the Senate by morning. That assumes that both McCaskill and Tester win their races, which they probably won’t. So settle with a Democratic House for now.
pharniel
that’s a nifty site. too bad it’s dying horribly due to traffic.
I wish the dems luck, so that those of us who don’t have a party can get some sanity back into things.
voting was also painless here in hippy town, MI
terry chay
According to NPR, the Democratic party picked up all three Indiana seats.
Wow!
matt
Does anyone feel like doing a quick round up of how the “fighting dem” candidates are doing?
matt
Tester up 300 votes with 1% reporting. :p
Scott
Election night beer: Deschutes Brewery Jubelale.
I can’t wait for early MT returns
MrSnrub
Joe Sestak over Curt Weldon in Pennsylvania, according to CNN.
Last I saw, Tammy Duckworth was down 4 points.
Murphy in Pennsylvania is beating Fitzpatrick.
So that’s 2 winning, one losing right now. I don’t know who the other ones are.
I’d say that overall they’re doing well, but every campaign is different.
yet another jeff
God…Mehlman was on MSNBC…grrrrr…
CaseyL
NPR just announced that Mahoney beat Foley’s stand-in in Florida. Since the last I’d heard was that the Republicans were hanging onto that one, I’m very happy.
I was already happy, mind you. Dems won Senate seats in PA, RI and OH, and squeaked out a close one in NJ.
Oddities: gay civil union bans seem to be passing even in states where Democrats are otherwise winning. Can’t figure that one out.
Great news: the draconian, godawful abortion ban in S Dakota seems to be going down, too!
I’m also pretty tipsy right now. I’m going to regret that tomorrow.
CaseyL
Keith Ellison has won – not just a Democrat, but the House’s first black Muslim!
Steve
Powerline writes about this guy like every day. Rest assured, even though most people have never heard of him, he’s going to be the face of the new terrorist-loving Democratic majority! Ward Churchill and Some Guy With a Sign Somewhere will still be in the picture, of course.
idonothingallday
Dogfish Head makes an Apricot IPA which is also delicious but I never found them in a store at price point that I would call cheap or even moderate
chopper
did i just see msnbc project a 32 seat pickup in the house for the dems, or am i just loopy on bus fumes?
Perry Como
I’m pretty sure tonight is a bad sign for the Dems.
matt
Could this massive wave for Democrats actually be bad for the Democratic party?
Steve
Well, it’s a given that after the American people experience two years of Pelosi/Rangel/Conyers et al, they will surely return Republicans to the majority for the next 8000 years.
CaseyL
Heh! Assrocket might stroke out, in front of God and everyone, now that Ellison’s been elected. And wouldn’t that be a pretty sight.
Jess
It’s a set-up for the big Republican win in ’08.
Perry Como
Never put those words together in the same sentence again.
Jess
(we probably shouldn’t even be joking about that–so far we’ve seen every OTT worse-case senario come true.)
Mr Furious
Ann Arbor?
g-rant
Lagunitas Maximus IPA’s for me. If Tester wins I have a 22oz Stone Arrogant Bastard waiting for me.
Tim F.
More than one? Jesus, man.
Gaijin Biker
So, I guess Chocola is down for the count?
Get it? Count Chocula? Ahhh, never mind…
matt
I have no idea who she is or what she stands for, but The Young Turks just had on a guy from http://www.votevets.org who said she was particularly bad on veterans issues, so he was thrilled to get the news about her loss.
matt
HOLY SHIT, via The Young Turks, Jim Webb just took the lead in VA!
matt
Does anyone know the absentee situation in VA? Have they been counted yet?
g-rant
I haven’t seen a clean Dem win since I was of voting age. I need at least two to celebrate properly. A third is chilled and ready to go. Ahhhhhh.
Scott
As of now, local NBC affiliate gives Tester 55%, Burns 43%. No percentages of precincts given.
Interestingly, Rehberg has already been declared winner with a 53%/45% lead over Lindeen.
Heavily into the Jubelale
Smitty
I see your DFH 60-Minute IPA, and raise you 3 120 Minute IPAs over the course of the evening. Weighing-in at 21% abv this year, I am happy, hammered, and loving life.
I don’t see the 6 the Dems need in the Senate. Maybe 5.
The Other Steve
JFK can finally rest safely at night, knowing Clay Shaw is no longer in the House trying to plot his assassination.
bob
Regarding the wave dems in a couple of years trying to keep their seats in conservative districts – do you mean spend less, smaller government conservative districts or pander to the zealots bomb some random country to boost our poll numbers conservative. Because it seems like quite a few dems ran on the former and what people on TV call conservatives only seem to like the latter.
Besides, ya gotta hand it to the dolphins – they just wanted it more.
Jessica
Well, all Democrats have to do is reverse the spending problems of the Bush administration, even a little. We could act like total clowns around national security and probably get better results than the Bush administration. Doing NOTHING about illegal immigration would be better than the stupid “Let’s build the Great Wall of America” plan. Restaffing FEMA would be a good start, and coming up with a plan to rebuild New Orleans. And we’ve got a perfect opening for playing the “Democrats protect your Constitutional Rights” card, considering the issues around illegal wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus and torture.
Considering the last several years of egregious abuse of government spending, civil rights and our own infrastructure, we have nowhere to go but up.
Steve
You’re right, Jessica, that the bar has been set pretty low. I hope for good things from these Democrats, and I really like some of the new faces. This is their opportunity, and they’ll be judged on the merits.
John S.
As they say – be careful what you wish for.
But this is a great day for America. At the very least, we can expect that Bush is now the lamest of lame ducks, and the check on the executive is back. I am very optimistic, and as many have mentioned, the bar has been set pretty low. Let’s all hope the Democrats have learned some valuable lessons while out in the desert in exile.
rob
You got that right. I got home after playing hockey at midnight (the old guys get the lousy ice times) and sat clicking the refresh button on the DCCC site for about an hour. Enjoyed every minute of it.
chopper
man, too many brooklyn lagers last night.
so, montana and VA are still too close, but apparently the dem is ahead by a hair in both races..
the question is, assuming the recount has similar numbers, what about absentee ballots?
zzyzx
I’m feeling surprisingly confident about the Senate.
This is what happens when you purge your party of all moderates. They move to the other one.
Bombadil
Just to add my vote — election night beer was a Wachuset Blueberry.
Normally I don’t go for fruit flavored beers, but since it had “blue” in the name, I felt I had to.
p.lukasiak
The dems are going to play this smart….right down the middle. The House will pass a minimum wage increase, change the Medicare prescription drug provision that prohibits the government from negotiating the best price for drugs, and take on the Bush tax cuts by making the “middle class” tax cuts permanent while repealing all of the “fat cat” tax cuts. On Iraq, they will support the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton commission. I also expect to see the House pass a bill that amends the torture bill that removes Bush’s authority to define torture…..
And my guess is that all of these provisions will be passed by the Senate as well regardless of who has control there…. there will be enough GOPers who are up for re-election in 2008 who will not want to be seen as “obstructionists” that all sorts of bills that Bushco hates will be crossing his desk….
What I find really interesting about the results is its impact on the GOP 2008 Presidential nomination. The GOP base remains supportive of Bush and the war in Iraq, while the rest of the country strongly disapproves of both. A “moderate” candidate is going to have a tough time beating whoever emerges as the standard-bearer for the far-right, and the general public in 2008 aren’t going to want a far-right winger in 2008.
(Of course, the Dems facility for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory will make things interesting regardless….)
p.lukasiak
so, montana and VA are still too close, but apparently the dem is ahead by a hair in both races..
with 99.80% of precincts reporting, Webb has a 7000 vote lead (49.55% to 49.25%) so unless there was a major screw up, Webb has won. (And given all the sleaze that the Allen campaign engaged in, he would be ill-advised to demand a recount.)
Montana is a different story — there are still about 9% of the precincts unreported, and the results from a few counties look, well, strange. The vast majority of counties had 85% or more of the number of voters from 2004…. but there are a significant number of “outliers” where a much smaller percentage of the voters showed up. In the “normal” looking counties, Tester is getting a minimum of 110% of the Kerry vote, while Allen is getting anywhere from 70-85% of the Bush vote. (and with 9% of the precincts unreported, Tester has 99% of the Kerry vote, while Allen has only 63% of the Bush vote.)
In other words, all those lawyers who were headed to virginia are probably turning around and headed to Montana….
Zifnab
25 House gains, 0 House loses
5(6?!) Senate gains, 0 Senate loses
6 Governorship gains, 0 Governship loses
Who here can say “Shut Out”?
Gleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
chopper
bigger house majority than the goopers won in their famous ‘revolution’ of 1994;
no GOP pickups at all in the house, senate or governors’ races. total shut-out;
the dems won more senate campaigns in a single election than either party since 1980.
this is a pretty big deal.
Walker
In the predictions thread I mulled about how long it will take Republicans to blame the Democrats for the 2007 recession. Glenn Reynolds has already done it today (2006):
chopper
i think a recount is automatic if the win is by less than 10K votes.
chopper
i love when goopers talk about the great economy, they only mention the Dow, and conveniently forget about the NASDAQ. i wonder why.
p.lukasiak
i think a recount is automatic if the win is by less than 10K votes.
no, a recount is not automatic… it has to be requested by a candidate. If the margin is 0.5% or less (which it is in this case) if a recount is requested the state pays for it. If its between .5% and 1%, the candidate pays for it.
****************
Breaking…. at 9:55AM, the Washington Post published a graphic on the Montana race with 100% of the precincts reporting…. Tester has won by 194,914 to 193,179.
MrSnrub
Chopper said:
If the difference is less than 0.5%, then the recount is automatic, and paid for by the state. If it’s between 0.5% and 1%, then the challenger can ask for a recount, but has to pay for it.
chopper
huh, all the news stories i read said the recount was automatic if it was less than 1 percent. oh well.
Andrew
To Glenn, not chopper: Cough, nominal versus real, you dishonest asshole.
p.lukasiak
huh, all the news stories i read said the recount was automatic if it was less than 1 percent. oh well.
Just to make it official….From the Virginia elections board page….
demimondian
In this case, the difference between 0.5% and 1.0% is academic; Webb will have won by less than 0.5%, so there will be a recount. (By the way, 0.5% of votes cast for those of your playing the home game, corresponds to an interval of…about 10,000 votes. So, see, everybody’s right! BII-IG -HUG- TENT.)
chopper
well aren’t you mister smarty-pants, lookin shit up and all that.
p.lukasiak
well aren’t you mister smarty-pants, lookin shit up and all that.
I expect that Darrell will be here soon to accuse me of forging that document too….
Darrell
How Dems handle their new Congressional investigatory powers will be telling. I predict Dems won’t be able to control themselves, immediately launching an investigation on how PNAC ‘led’ us into war ‘for oil’, a full scale investigation into Cheney’s ‘war profits’, and what did President Bush ‘know’ about 9/11 and when did he know it.
Walker
Forget NASDAQ. He has forever ignored the housing market. The average middle class American has far more money invested in the housing market (which they extract through HELOCs) that the securities markets.
When it comes to economics, Glenn is either incredibly dishonest or incredibly ignorant. I am still do not know which of the two I believe.
chopper
what darrell really wants to know is, when will the dems in power get to investigating pie?
Baby Jane
No, Virginia, There isn’t a God.
Love,
Santa Claus
jcricket
I decided to not watch election returns and instead watch some good old network TV (House, Justice, etc.). I saw a teensy bit of our local news (Burner hanging in there, but losing, everyone else I cared about winning). I checked my computer briefly, and saw Democrats had won the house and won two seats in the Senate. I figured, great, that’s the best I could hope for.
But then to wake up this morning and find we’d won another 4 Senate seats and a whole bunch more governorships and even more house seats, is amazing. Better than I could ever have hoped for.
And the whole “total rout”, “complete shutout”, “most Senate seats”, “majority of governorships”, etc. is the line we need to push in the press.
I used to believe it had to be the former (i.e. intentionally dishonest because it made Bush or the Republicans look better). I mean, he graduated from Yale Law and is a professor. He can’t be that dumb, right?
But then I read crap from John Yoo claiming we set aside the constitution whenever the President needs to, and Powerline declaring Bush is a “genius” (not just right about stuff, but a genius) and I wonder.
Zifnab
Would you like some pie with those ‘ marks?
jcricket
C’mon Tim, just get interviewed for Vanity Fair in a couple of years and pin it all on the traitorously incompetent leadership of John Cole, or the liberally-biased WordPress blogging software or whatever. Either that or just scrub the archives and claim you never predicted what you clearly did.
Baby Jane
On the Senate: How difficult can it be to tally the last 0.15% of precincts? Are they using brand new hi-tech computerized electronic voting machines or something!?
chopper
blame it on the booze, sugar-tits.
Newport 9
As a Rhode Islander, I would like to take this opportunity to thank soon-to-be-former Mayor Steve Laffey (R-Cranston) for his devastating primary run against soon-to-be-former Senator Lincoln Chafee. Steve’s run against Chafee helped soak up millions of dollars and hundreds of man-hours that otherwise would have gone to help soon-to-be-former Senators George Allen of Virginia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Rick Santorum of
VirginiaPennsylvania, and Jim Talent of Missouri, thereby contributing to their defeats.Of course, thanks also go to RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, NRSC Chairperson Liddy Dole, and supergenius mastermind Karl Rove for their hamfisted interference in our state’s Republican senatorial primary. You helped make it all possible.
Sojourner
Also be sure to thank Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth. Laffey was his attempt to rid the party of the moderates. He wants only anti-tax guys in the Repub party. I guess Moore’s strategy worked. The moderate Repub is gone.
jcricket
Even bigger deal are the 6 governorships and that Democrats were +6 on control of state legislatures
We now control 23 totally, Republicans 15 and 9 are split. Let’s get more of those 9 into our column in 2008.
jcricket
I wonder who’s done more in to ruin Republicans electoral chances in the past:
1) Fire-breathing fundies (Dobson, Falwell, Robertson)
2) Anti-tax/anti-government zealots (Norquist, Moore)
3) Hardline anti-immigrationists (Tancredo)
And who will continue to do so in the future. My prediction is #2 falls away a bit, because they like power almost as much as they hate taxes. #1 and #3 still feel like they’re on the rise within the GOP.
Jomar Reyes
Tester wins in Montana. Webb wins in Virginia.
Say hello to Senate President Harry Reid.
Bombadil
Excellent questions all, and ones we deserve answers to. I must say, I’m pleasantly surprised to see Darrell calling for these hearings.