The post-election yays and nays tally

[Updated 1:03pm] As everyone knows by now, the November 2006 midterm election are over, and all that's left is waiting for the dust to settle on the remaining two Senate races.

I've never claimed to be any sort of political pundit -- just one loud-mouthed opinionated voter out of 300 million -- so I'll forego the post-game analysis and point out my loud-mouthed opinionated highlights and lowlights.

Yays:

• Rick Santorum -- gone! Anyone stupid enough to claim homosexuality is no different than pedophilia, incest, or bestiality should have no place in any seat of power. In fact, the only good thing to come out of Santorum's term of office was the inadvertent coinage of a disgusting new slang word, "santorum" (definition not for the faint-hearted).

• Katherine Harris -- not just gone, but stomped so deep into the dirt that she's sucking mantle. Granted, you didn't need a fortune-teller to predict this result; her mismanaged and delusional disaster of a campaign was a font of endless humor for pol-watchers across the country. I like to believe that her international embarrassment is just karmic payback for her efforts in stealing Florida for Bush in the 2000 Presidential election.
  

  Even so, I hope this isn't the last we've seen of Ms. Harris -- I'm sure we'll all welcome the opportunity for even more laughter in the next election...

• Ken Blackwell -- de-nied! Ken lost the Ohio governor's race but big, and deservedly so. Between his ham-fisted voter-supression efforts and his secret partnership with the inherently insecure Diebold e-voting machine company, he's earned a well-deserved reputation as the Buckeye State's Katherine Harris (but with half the stupid).

• Howard Dean. The 50-state strategy works, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's a rather obvious plan -- just ask Cmdr. Peter Quincy Taggart -- but Dean deserves the props for being the guy to actually push it forward and play it through.

• Election monitoring. I'm of the opinion that the only reason we didn't see a lot of "miraculous" come-from-behind victories this time around was because too many people were actually keeping an eye out for shenanagans. You can never have too many people observing an election, despite what Republican rent-a-mobs would have you believe.

Nays:

• Jean Schmidt (R-OH) hangs on to her seat by a (Diebold-assisted?) scant 51%. Frankly, the woman deserves to be kicked to the curb simply for the tastelessness of insulting a fellow Congressman and a veteran on the floor of Congress.

• Tammy Duckworth loses her bid for a Illinois House seat by a(nother) scant 49% of the vote. Not only do I think it'd be fitting for a double-amputee Iraq veteran to be a Congressional representative, I was looking forward to seeing news reporters try to say the name "Duckworth" with a straight face.
  (Hey, it still beats "Santorum"...)

• Joe Lieberman's still around? Connecticut, WTF? Sorry, but I strongly believe that he's only in this for his ego (why else would he name his independent party "Connecticut for Lieberman"?), and the fact that he got most of his election support from out-of-state conservatives tells me that Connecticut residents shouldn't expect him to be "independent" nor "representative".

  Note, also, that a Lieberman victory doesn't mean that Republicans will stop slamming the American Northeast a hotbed of liberalism. At best, they'll just change the smear into "'northeast liberal' (unless you're from Connecticut)"...

• Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) didn't get kicked out of office. Sure, his race was safe, but anyone with the iron-fisted gall to turn off Congressmen's microphones just because they actually wanted to talk about detainee abuses at Guantanamo deserves a whack with a political clue-by-four.

• Conrad Burns not getting slammed by a wider margin. I don't know what's the final tally for the Montana Senate seat, but anyone who insults firefighters as money-leeching slackers deserves to get booted by a wide margin.

• Ford loses to Corker in Tennesee. Racist negative ads still work, kids.

• Still too many dirty tricks. If Republican candidates are such superior choices, why do they have to resort to fake endorsements, fake sample ballots, and "Encourage Terrorists - Vote Democrat" signs?

What happens next? Beats me, but I'm sure it's going to involve lots of stonewalling from the White House. And given how the Administration has run roughshod over the Democrats for the last six years, I'm just not all that ready to believe Bush when he says he wants to work in bipartisan friendship. Geez, where were you six years ago?

(Whoa, News flash! Rumsfeld resigns as Secretary of Defense. Can't say this is a bad thing, though I'm sure most folks will agree it's three years too late. On the plus side, at least Joe Lieberman isn't getting tapped to take his place...)

[Updated 1:03pm] Wow, not even a day later, and Bush throws out bipartisan goodwill with a double-dose of chutzpah. From today's post-election Presidential Press Conference:

I reassured the House and Senate leaders that I intend to work with the new Congress in a bipartisan way to address issues confronting this country. I invited them to come to the White House in the coming days to discuss the important work remaining this year and to begin conversations about the agenda for next year.

The message yesterday was clear: The American people want their leaders in Washington to set aside partisan differences, conduct ourselves in an ethical manner, and work together to address the challenges facing our nation.

...Five minutes later...

Amid this time of change, I have a message for those on the front lines. To our enemies: Do not be joyful. Do not confuse the workings of our democracy with a lack of will.

"Yeah, I'm gonna be bipartisan, really! And you terrorists, don't think that a Democratic victory means we're now a bunch of weaklings!"

I swear, this is the real-world equivalent of that Dilbert strip: