Right. A Dem majority of 1-4 seats in the House is not a bloodbath. If the Senate holds, and it should, they can stop anything coming from the House and Bush might actually grow a spine and veto if he has to. No way to overturn those at this stage unless the GOP get even wimpier.
The Dems don't have the guts to try and unfund the war ala Vietnam. They'll have way too many people angry at them and we can create a new voter bloc buzzword: pissed off military moms!
Frankly, the GOP did a lot of this to themselves. The ground game obviously wasn't as good as they thought even though turnout in areas was pretty high. Also, a lot of GOP candidates ran lousy campaigns like Allen. Corker was awful but should pull it out. Pennsylvania is a Dem state and they did vote against Bush but Santorum also was warned by the "conservatives" that he would pay for backing Specter and that might have played a role.
Face it...voters wanted "change" regardless of why or even if they truly understand the issues. The economy is good but they don't care. They care more about TV shows.
I doubt Iraq really dragged the ticket down and without really good exit polls we'll never know if the GOP base stayed home in some states but overall voting numbers will tell us something.
But considering history it's not as bad as the average losses for the party in power in a 6th year for a president except Clinton had his 6th year losses in his fourth year.
The Senate Republicans generally bow to the Democrats. It's up to Bush to veto the craziness.
Whoever's idea it was (if it wasn't Allen himself) to make the central theme of his advertising what Webb wrote in his novels needs to commit ritual Japanese Seppuku.
Really stupid and played horribly in Northern Virginia, I'm sure.
We lost 3 so far, right? Slight chance to pickup MD. VA is going to recount, and that leaves MT and MO and TN. If we hold TN doesn't that make it 50-50?
I don't think we are listening to the same news because every news outlet that I know of has said it will be between a 28-36 seat advantage Dims when this is over.
The UNAPPEASABLES don't help us at all and neither did some of the crazy Congresscritters who turned on the president, in late days, help themselves, this nation, or us.
If we keep the Senate, it will be by an eyelash.
No, this is NOT a "bloodbath"; however, it IS hell for us and in the long-run, the nation.
But they don't have to "de-fund" anything". The war has been paid for in large part by supplemental appropriations. All they have to do is not pass the supplemental. (Although the President could use other Operations and Maintenance funds, but at the cost of making Jimmy Carter's hollow military look rock solid). Guess who will be the Chair of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee?
Murtha.
We have to hold the Senate. Judicial appointments depend on it.
House margin matters as well. I'm not getting any reliable sense of how big the RAT margin will be -- MSNBC is saying gain of 29 seats for the RATS.