Via DemfromCt, Bush sinks to new low:

President Bush’s job approval rating has fallen to just 31 percent, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll. Bill Clinton’s lowest rating during his presidency was 36 percent; Bush’s father’s was 29 percent, and Ronald Reagan’s was 35 percent. Jimmy Carter’s and Richard Nixon’s lows were 28 and 23 percent, respectively. (Just 24 approve of outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s job performance; and 31 percent approve of Vice President Dick Cheney’s.) Worst of all, most Americans are writing off the rest of Bush’s presidency; two-thirds (66 percent) believe he will be unable to get much done, up from 56 percent in a mid-October poll; only 32 percent believe he can be effective. That’s unfortunate since 63 percent of Americans say they’re dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country; just 29 percent are satisfied, reports the poll of 1,006 adults conducted Thursday and Friday nights.

Professor Althouse is a nice and bright person, that despite my significant differences with her views. But I must say this post is perplexing:

Okay, I'm depressed about the election.

. . . It's the failure of Americans to support the war. It's the folding and crumpling because things didn't go well enough and the way we conspicuously displayed that to our enemies. They're going to use that information.

For how long? Forever.

Huh? Folding and crumpling? Is that what you call realizing doing the same stupid thing over and over again will not yield different results? I really have to question whether Professor Althouse actually understands what has happened in Iraq. It is not minor setbacks. It is an unmitigated debacle. And she would have us continue that? She would have us stay the course? Explain that to me.

As I predicted, the lone GOP bright spot this election was Lieberman's win in Connecticut. It strikes me as funny as (1) Lieberman is voting for Reid for Senate Majority Leader and (2) Rumsfeld got canned the day after. But the GOP needs its bright spots - and it is either the Dems are conservatives (I think they may have figured out that was not too bright. Have not read that much today) or Joementum. They choose both sometimes:

Jonah, . . . [T]here has been precious little said about who won on the left. In as much as you can say it was a failure of politics instead of policy for the Republicans, doesn't the failure of Lamont to take out Lieberman also point to a failure of policy over politics for the Kos crowd? They purged their ranks in the primary only to have their head handed to them in the actual election. I know this was expected, but I think seeing it actually occur bodes well overall for the general direction of the political discourse in the US. the Democrats won in places where they looked and sounded like conservatives, and where the Kos crown had influence, they were trounced.

Of course, Webb, Tester, most of the Dem candidates, including the two NH House winners, etc., were also Kos candidates. The funny thing is the GOP worked harder and cared more about Lieberman than their own GOP candidates. And they still do. And they wonder why they lost.

Via AmericaBlog, Barr is positively insightful:

[In 1994,] Many in the new [GOP] House majority incorrectly concluded that their 1994 victory was a mandate for all they had campaigned on . . . What many congressional Republicans failed to realize until much later was that their November victory was less of a vote of confidence in them and more a vote against Clinton. . . . The Democrats will do everything in their power to avoid a return to second-class citizenship. They will be more likely than were the Republicans a dozen years ago to take modest steps, and to be careful lest rhetoric overtake feasible action. The goal for Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her battle-hardened team will be to spend two years laying the groundwork for further gains in 2008, and to push an agenda that will provide a solid and likely centrist platform for their party's standard-bearer.

Seriously, is this really Bob "Impeach Clinton" Barr? Remarkable.

Kevin Drum is a smart guy but sometimes well:

In the long run, I suppose the higher totals among Latinos and independents are the big news. Beyond that, there's not much. Keep this in mind when you start reading anecdotal analyses of "what happened." Most of it doesn't hold water. Based on the exit poll data, it was just a broad-based wave of disgust against Republican rule.

Well beyond the fact that the fastest growing political group and the fastest growing minority group broke strongly to the Dems, no big whoop.

Come on Kevin, you're smarter than that. Those are HUGE political developments. They are the future, the bright Dem future.

The New York Times has a new profile of Sen. Harry Reid. AmericaBlog highlights the funniest parts:

Harry Reid began Election Day with 50 situps and 80 push-ups (very red state of him) and 40 minutes of yoga (very blue state of him).

He spent most of the momentous day in his Senate office, waiting. Just after 2 p.m., he finally heard some actual news: Britney Spears was filing for divorce.

“Britney Spears,” Mr. Reid said, shaking his head. “She loses a little weight, and now she’s getting all cocky about things.” He added, “Britney has gotten her mojo back.”

Few would peg Mr. Reid, 66, as someone with anything to say about Britney Spears or, for that matter, someone who would ever use the word “mojo.” But he is a tricky figure to pigeonhole or predict, a Democrat who is a Mormon opposed to abortion and who looks more like a civics teacher than someone set to become the most powerful person in the Senate.

Jim Wallis insults:

In this election, both the Religious Right and the secular Left were defeated, and the voice of the moral center was heard.

Linc Chafee is a good man. But it never was clear to me why he did not become an Independent and caucus with the Dems. He would be Senator right now if he did. And it really would reflect who he is. Because of that, I have to sympathize somewhat with some of my friends at Red State:

Since the Republican party spent over a million dollars helping him defeat a real Republican, and pulled out the GOTV machine to mobilize Democrats on his behalf, Lincoln Chafee has decided to display his trademark dazzling intellect by declaring that the appropriate thing for him to do now is leave the Republican party. . . . When asked if his comments meant he thought he might not belong in the Republican Party, he replied: "That's fair." The self-serving idiot continues peeing on the party which (inexplicably) bent over backwards to save his job ...

All of it is inexplicable.

In my view, Chris Shays (R-CT) deserved defeat in his House race. He survived. But I tip my hat to him for this from his victory speech Tuesday night:

"I don't know how you'll react to this, but I want to also say this," he said, after quieting his supporters who'd been joyously chanting, "Two more years!" He then unfolded a piece of paper and read off a list of names. "I sent them to Iraq and they came home draped in American flags," Shays continued, as the once-raucous ballroom became eerily quiet. "I think about them almost every day of my life, and, when the press talked about how tormented I must feel about losing the election, they just didn't get it. ... The only torment I feel is for those families, and I pray that we can make it right for these families and that we will find a way to have our men and women come home from success, not failure, but that we find a way to bring them home." It was a numbing sentiment indeed.

Respect to you for that Representative Shays. Joe Lieberman would NEVER show that quality.

This is funny to me:

Righty blogger consensus on the reason behind defeat 11/7 is clear: too much spending:

• Tapscott's Copy Desk: "When Republicans worry more about staying in government than about limiting government, they get thrown out of government. That's the lesson of Nov. 7, 2006."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "Republicans lost because we forgot who we were. We were supposed to be the small-government, low taxes party. We got the "low taxes" part right but we forgot about that all-important "small-government" aspect. In doing so, we angered and infuriated our base, many of whom decided that divided government was a better and more effective way of achieving small-government goals than was electing Republicans."

Heh. I guess this word - IRAQ - is not in their database anymore. By the way, the GOP lost independents and moderates by 20 points, the largest margin in recent memory - that's why they lost. The deficit did not even register as an issue. Which it should have.

With the vote tally so close, Allen noted that he had the legal right to ask for a recount, a procedure he said could drag on until Christmas. "With deep respect for the people of Virginia and to bind factions together for a positive purpose, I do not wish to cause more rancor by protracted litigation which would in my judgment not alter the results," Allen said, flanked by his wife Susan and long-time Virginia Senator John W. Warner ®.

David Brooks says:

Well, [moderate]'s [have] been on steroids, because on Tuesday the muscular middle took control of America. Say goodbye to the era of Rovian base mobilization. Say goodbye to the era of conservative dominance that began in 1980. On Tuesday, 47 percent of the voters were self-described moderates, according to exit polls, and they asserted their power by voting for the Democrats in landslide proportions.

Brooks calls Dems moderates. I agree. I expect then that Brooks agrees with this agenda:

Pelosi also said Democrats will pursue an agenda that has been resisted by Bush, including cutting student loan interest rates, funding embryonic stem cell research, authorizing the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare patients and imposing a national cap on industrial carbon dioxide emissions.

That clip leaves out three other big agenda items - raising the minimum wage, implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and changing course in Iraq.

This is a moderate's dream agenda. We'll see if Brooks is really a moderate now. I predict he is not.