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I believe Hillary's probably smilin' big tonight. The way is now completely clear for her to run for president in '04, "for the good of the country."

I disagree; her entire "machine" was smashed to bits tonight. Every candidate they campaigned for lost -- save one or two.

Clintons are the kiss of death.

" I believe Hillary's probably smilin' big tonight. The way is now completely clear for her to run for president in '04, "for the good of the country."

No..because the dims are in line 3 on the NY ballot and loose a lot of committee, staff and other perks in NY.

It blows a hole in her presidential ambitions

No, not smashed to death, just beat in this round.

Strategically Bush pulled off an incredible victory, but these were close races, not mandates. In fact I am convinced that with better candidates and better campaign strategy the Dems could have picked up a couple of seats(or more) in the Senate, instead of losing what appears to be a clean sweep in the Senate(they didn't beat Hutchinson, he beat himself and too many conservatives abandoned him). While maybe not the WH, the Dems could win back seats in both chambers in '04. Hopefully they won't figure out how, but we still have quite the uphill battle.

But Rove and Bush have proven they know how to methodically win the tough battles. A great evening tonight, and I am confident that they can now move forward and continue to reshape public perception of the GOP and conservatives.

I just saw a video clip online of Lindsey Graham's victory speech. Among other things, he said a very wise thing, "There's no excuses". Now that Republicans (God-willing) are in control, there's no excuses. And he's right. We cannot afford to screw this up. Republicans can't gloat (Rush Limbaugh made a good point about 1994, that the class of 1994 got a little arrogant and thought the whole country had gone conservative, when it hadn't) and Republicans and Pres. Bush have to be smart and pragmatic about this, or else we'll have it all snatched away from us.

Alex Sanders came to the Republican Victory Night headquarters along with his wife and congratulated Graham in person. (During his own concession speech Sanders said Graham was a "fine gentleman".) Graham said they were both very gracious and he said several times that Mr. and Mrs. Sanders were "good people" and "fine people", etc. He also said he was going to thank the most important person responsible, the Good Lord. He said after he'd calmed down, the first thing he was gonna do was get down on his knees and thank the Good Lord.

I like to see gracious winners and gracious losers.

In the Maryland governor's race, I saw where Katherine Kennedy Townsend made a grownup concession speech...some of her crowd was angry and she basically shushed them up and gave a non-bitter, professional concession speech that you would expect from somebody whose whole family is in politics.

My husband told me there were a couple of bitter, crybaby concession speeches on the part of a couple of Dems, but I didn't see them and didn't get a chance to ask who they were (he had to go to bed, to get up early tomorrow.)