What’s notable, I think, about this vote is that the people who would be most negatively affected by it — minor females — didn’t have a say at all. It would be easy for California voters, who are all of majority age and many of whom are parents, to vote on their first instinct of, “Well if my daughter were having an abortion, I’d want to know.” And yet most voted against the initiative anyway. To me, this demonstrates a remarkable ability on the part of a large chunk of California voters to cast ballots in the interest of weaker members of society, instead of simply following their first knee-jerk reaction. I suspect this is rare in electoral politics.

Unborn fetus: “… agh… dammit. Well, I suppose it is hard to get a mic up” GOOD NIGHT EVERYBODY

KEKEKEKEKEKE (Note: KEKEKEKE is code word for non-serious cheap shot.)

They pulled out the evil “L” word but Kilgore didn’t scare his base enough. Kilgore also spent most of his time telling everyone how bad Kaine was and why they shouldn’t vote for him while forgetting he should be trying to sell himself in the meantime.

I believe we picked up 3 Dem seats that were previously held by Repubs.

We got multiple last minute messages on our voice mail urging us to vote yes on the parental notification for abortion proposition, while all our snail mail urged us to vote no on it (I think because the snail mail was from people who had us down as liberals and wanted to bring out the liberal vote). I didn’t watch any of the TV ads, so I don’t know what campaigning went on there.

Bring on the global warming! :P

AHnold was his own negative publicity.

The Republican legislators will have lots of reason to move to the center for ‘08 races. The Republican three-branch sweep has accomplished just about nothing, much like the Contract with America.

That is assuming that Dems will get back in charge. Considering that so far their only platform is that we aren’t George Bush / we aren’t the Republicans, I wouldn’t hope too much (especially since they won’t have Bush to kick around in 2008).

The only other platform they have is “bring our troops home now” which if implemented would likely result in total collapse in Iraq, horrible unrest in the middle-east and sky high gas prices / tanking economy. Resulting in the Republicans back in charge in 2012. On the bright-side it might spur adoption of hybrid cars which would make at least the environmentalists happy.

It is not at all clear how the midterm shakes out, because the filing deadlines have not passed in most places, so we don’t even know who many of the candidates are. The margin in the House will be a lot smaller in Bush’s last two lame duck years. The Republican legislators will have lots of reason to move to the center for ’08 races. The Republican three-branch sweep has accomplished just about nothing, much like the Contract with America.

In Connecticut, Shays is in trouble. Shays! He’s an institution.

He’s also a liberal, who bucks the party every chance he gets. In fact, I think he may be the most liberal Republican in the House caucus. He’s a bad example to use if you’re trying to show that Republicans are failing because they’re moving right on social issues.

Lincoln Chaffee is in trouble in Rhode Island.

And the NRSC is fighting hard against his primary opponent, Steven Laffey, who is generally considered to be more conservative. Again, not a great pick if you’re trying to show that the national party is flacking for the social right.

Besides, you folks have problems in your backyard. Virginia has a second consecutive Dem governor. Are you sure you can hold the Old Dominion in ‘08? With your margin among black folks down to, what, 3%, that might be tough.

By that logic, you guys must really be concerned about Massachusetts, given that you’re on your third GOP governor in a row there. C’mon, give me a break. You can cherry-pick these examples all over the place of red states electing blue officials and vice versa. West Virginia has a Democratic governor if I’m not mistaken, but I don’t think Hillary’s going to be making many campaign stops there. Kilgore lost a close race in VA, but that was his own fault, as the rest of the GOP ticket did fine. None of this tells you anything about national trends. The House isn’t switching hands any time soon, and even if Democrats successfully defend all their incumbent Senate seats in ’06 and win every toss-up, they’ll only have a net gain of two.