Brendan Nyhan

Hotline editor Chuck Todd is describing last night’s results as a realignment of the Northeast:

A Category 5 political storm hit the shores of the Northeast on Tuesday, realigning the region from a moderately competitive terrain between the two parties to solidly Democrat. The Northeast for congressional Democrats is now the mirror image of the South for congressional Republicans.

Like any strong storm, the force weakened away from its epicenter. The farther away from the Northeast, the more competitive the GOP performed. But despite hanging tough in other regions around the country, Republicans suffered their worst midterm defeat in a generation.

If true, this has dramatic implications for the nation’s politics — we’re still feeling the aftershocks from the South’s turn toward the GOP.

The rush to credit Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy” for the Democratic wins is apparently on — here’s Adele Stan on Tapped:

As much as I’ve seen Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, all over the airwaves in the last 24 hours, I’ve yet to hear him sing the praises of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, whose 50-state strategy appears quite vindicated this morning. You’ll recall that there’s been a blood feud between the two men. Now I’m waiting to watch Emanuel do that goofy dance (did anybody watch him after Pelosi’s victory speech?) with Dr. Dean — and maybe give the DNC boss a big bear hug.

The problem is that we have no idea if Dean’s strategy was responsible or not. It’s totally plausible that the money was spread out over the whole country to little effect, and that a national anti-GOP wave pushed the Democrats to victory.

Isaac Chotiner points out that Rick Santorum got only 41 percent of the vote and he was an incumbent! That is a serious beatdown. Even crazy Katherine Harris got 38 percent in Florida despite months of bad press, no money, and every Republican in the state hiding from her.

Mike Nifong’s latest hapless challengers, Democrat Lewis Cheek and Republican Steve Monks, apparently managed to split a majority anti-Nifong vote and return the Duke lacrosse prosecutor to office:

With all but provisional ballots counted, Nifong, a Democrat, had 49 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results. County Commissioner Lewis Cheek, who lent his name to an effort to unseat Nifong through gubernatorial appointment, received 39 percent. Write-in ballots accounted for about 12 percent of the vote, and it was unclear how many of those went to lawyer Steve Monks, the only official write-in candidate.

Republicans in Connecticut managed to coalesce around Joe Lieberman rather than supporting a sure loser. Why couldn’t Monks voters have done the same?

Apparently it’s time to start making up things that Democrats will do. Tom DeLay on CNN this morning at approximately 8:30 AM EST:

They [Democrats] want to cut and run. Many of them in America want that to happen. I think that’s really unfortunate. And I’m sure they will defund the war on terror. I think that makes us less safe in America. And when the American people realize that, they’ll turn on them in ’08 and kick them out.

Um, no. Here’s the Washington Post today:

Early Democratic priorities will include raising the minimum wage, boosting homeland security spending, shifting the nation’s energy policy away from oil and gas exploration toward alternative fuel sources, and reversing cuts to education spending.

–The Democratic takeover of the House and (probably) the Senate will predictably lead to all sorts of silly analysis. In particular, pundits are going to complain about “gridlock” and whine that Democrats not behaving like a “governing party”.

The reality, though, is that gridlock is inevitable. Anything Democrats want to pass can be blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate or a Bush veto. Anything Republicans want to pass can be stymied on party-line House votes under unfavorable rules. And no one has any incentive to compromise with a historic presidential election only two years away.

In addition, center-left pundits and media analysts will start holding Democrats to absurdly high standards that they never applied to Republicans. Call it the soft bigotry of low GOP expectations. For instance, Michael Kinsley wrote a column before the election complaining that Democrats’ campaign manifesto failed to propose tax increases or a magic plan that would get us out of Iraq. As Kevin Drum put it, “Apparently the only thing sufficiently bracing for Kinsley’s brand of tough love would be a joint suicide note from the Democratic Party.” Commentators will jump on this bandwagon, calling on Democrats to be “responsible” and pass politically damaging bills like tax increases even though they will have no chance of passage.

–The 9/11 hangover is over. For years, the political aftermath of the terrorist attacks has distorted our politics, making President Bush look invincible and Karl Rove seem like a genius. Neither is true. Now that the effects of that traumatic event have washed away, President Bush is back to where he was before 9/11 — looking like the Republican Jimmy Carter. And Rove, while smart, is mostly just a hack who was in the right place at the right time. It’s going to be fascinating to see how people adjust. The White House continues to be baffled that its post-9/11 playbook doesn’t work. And the media, which has been rushing to accommodate itself to Republicans, will whipsaw back as Democrats assert their new power.

–George Allen’s apparent loss (pending a recount) is still hard to believe. I feel some pride that I was pointing out Allen’s ugly history on the issue of race before it was cool. But my goal was to help stop him from becoming president, not to beat him in this cycle. May we never have to write about nooses, Confederate flags and “macaca” ever again.

-Was it worth $29.5 million for Hillary Clinton to rack up a 67-31 victory? Is anyone impressed? On the other hand, the donor list and infrastructure she has built up may be far more valuable.

-Look for Hillary to punch up her rhetoric on Iraq to match the national mood on the war. But as Noam Scheiber writes, John McCain is the worst positioned candidate of all:

One of the longstanding assumptions about tonight is that John McCain benefits from heavy Republican lossses. The thinking is that it forces a lot of skeptical conservatives to give the guy a second look, since he’s demonstrated an ability to win over independents, and since he’s generally strong where a lot of Republicans are weak (like the corruption issue). But I’m not so sure about that. In addition to corruption, frustration with Iraq is clearly driving tonight’s results. And, as Tim Russert just suggested on MSNBC, it’s hard to see how you can be a major-party nominee in 2008 without a plan for withdrawing from Iraq. Well, just about the only person in America other than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld who thinks we need to double-down in Iraq is John McCain.

Now, as my colleague John Judis has suggested, it’s possible that McCain’s position will evolve over the next two years. But, for the moment, he’s looking like the first-tier GOP candidate most out of touch with the voting public.

Will the media let Mr. Straight Talk change his position on the most important issue in politics today? Don’t be surprised…

–The predictable backlash toward negative campaigning that happens after every election is underway. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, John Ellis denounces the two parties and predicts that the barrage of negativity will lead to the emergence of a third party. It’s implausible for reasons I’ve gone over a number of times. But that won’t stop the utopians at Unity ’08 from trying to sell the same fantasy for the next two years.

On election day, ABC News has its priorities straight — here’s the breaking news email I just got:

POP STAR BRITNEY SPEARS HAS FILED FOR DIVORCE FROM HUSBAND KEVIN FEDERLINE, CITING IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES, A COURT SPOKESWOMAN SAYS

Fantastic. But did she buy meth from a male prostitute?

Last week, Republicans sold the press on the myth that Nancy Pelosi was in hiding, as Media Matters documented. Not only is she not in hiding, she did a podcast with WWE Smackdown Your Vote:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Featured In Latest WWE Smackdown Your Vote! Podcast

STAMFORD, Conn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is the latest national figure to be featured in a new podcast in Smackdown Your Vote!’s continuing series, “The Nowinski Perspective,” hosted by WWE Political Correspondent Chris Nowinski(TM). The podcasts can be found at WWE.com, smackdownyourvote.com and on iTunes.

I have to listen to that after this election…

Mickey Kaus draws the wrong conclusions:

Just asking: What does it tell you about a political party if in a year of epic disaster for their opponents the best they can hope for is a 51-49 majority in the Senate? … 8:21 A.M.

It tells you that the Senate is not a majoritarian institution. Only 1/3 of its seats are up for election at a time, and Democratic voters are concentrated in densely populated states, which disadvantages them in the Senate. As Hendrik Hertzberg wrote:

Fifty-one senators—a majority—can represent states with as little as seventeen per cent of the American people. Sixty senators—enough to stop a filibuster—can represent as little as twenty-four per cent. That’s theory. What about reality? Well, if each of every state’s two senators is taken to represent half that state’s population, then the Senate’s fifty-five Republicans represent 131 million people, while its forty-four Democrats represent 161 million. Looked at another way, the present Senate is the product of three elections, those of 2000, 2002, and 2004. In those elections, the total vote for Democratic senatorial candidates, winning and losing, was 99.7 million; for Republicans it was 97.3 million. The forty-four-person Senate Democratic minority, therefore, represents a two-million-plus popular majority—a circumstance that, unless acres trump people, is at variance with common-sense notions of democracy.

In addition, it tells you that the Democrats are starting out holding only 45 seats, including 18 of the 33 seats up in this cycle. If they get to 51, that means they took 24 out of the 33 available seats. That’s a pretty good batting average.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here’s part of the headline from a January 1924 New York Times article I just came across while doing research for my dissertation on presidential scandal:

Sound familiar?