The Day After: 'Throwing My Hands in the Air'

Kate, we hardly knew thee

Excerpts from the post-election thoughts of my son, Cassidy, over at Cassidy's Blog:

Today is a good day to be happy. A day you can say to yourself, "you know, the past five or six years haven't been great, but I can walk with a smile on my face right now." So smile, dammit!

THINGS THAT SURPRISED ME

* Maryland: The Senate was not as close as I thought it would be. As I said before, I thought this race was really going to come down to the wire, and as it turns out Cardin really walked away with it.

* The Democrats have a chance to win six Senate seats. And they almost got seven! Not six, seven! (I'm resisting the urge to make the Seven-Minute Abs joke)

* All the ballot initiatives against gay marriage. They really flew under the radar this time around, just because of all the hubub of the Democratic takover.

* The Democratic sweep in New England. I though quite a few of these moderate Republicans would hold out, but I guess I was wrong. And consider this, if current trends continue, we will have only one Republican Congressman from the entire New England area. That is truly amazing. As Chris Matthews said last night, as the Democrats lost the South in 1994, the Republicans have lost the Northeast in 2006.

THINGS THAT DID NOT SURPRISE ME

* Lieberman winning. Well, yes and no. I predicted Lamont to win this thing not only a few weeks ago. I'm upset about it but not distraught, and I don't think I'll ever respect Lieberman again. And on a side note, it was fun watching Lamont's concession speech, which basically was along the lines of, "yes, I am upset that I lost, but, hey, I'm filthy rich and I have a smoking-hot wife, what can I really complain about."

* John Kerry had no effect on anything tonight. So we can all put our feigned outrage away.

THINGS THAT DISAPPOINTED ME

* As mentioned before, the anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives. Really the black eye of this whole election. The total, accross the board anti-abortion measure in South Dakota was the only bright spot in all of this.

* Ford Jr. losing in Tennessee. Just goes to show that even in 2006 a black man can't run national office in the South withought being subject to race-baiting. Makes me sad.

* Tammy Duckworth lost. I think she was my favorite candidate in this whole election.

* Also, Jean Schmidt is ahead as of right now. Really dissapointing.

* Britney Spears and K-Fed calling it quits. I mean, if they can't make it, who can?

THINGS I LIKED

* The TV coverage. Really well done this time around. While I am mainly a CNN guy for this sort of thing, I really got into MSNBC's coverage by the end of the night.

* So sad I didn't get to see the "Daily Show" coverage. Luckily I DVR'ed it. Same with Colbert.

* The networks were pretty good about restisting the GOP spin.

* Did you know we now have a Muslim Congressman?

BIGGEST LOSER

* George Allen. He had been mentioned in many circles as being the only legitimate challenge to John McCain in 2008 for the Republican nomination, and only a few months ago was predicted to cakewalk into his reelection. My buddy Matt even predicted him to be the nominee. Even if he does prevail in '06, he's toast.

* A close runner up is Karl Rove for the obvious reasons.

BIGGEST WINNER

* Howard Dean. A lot of people laughed and/or hit the panic button when he decided to start massively funding all races around the country. This time around, so many races that would never got a chance were in play not only because of the national trend we've seen the past two days, but because they also had campaign cash to throw around.

* Runner up is Rahm Emanuel, who hand-picked a lot of these new Democrats to run.

LOOKING AHEAD

Virginia is now officially a battleground state. It's the new Florida. This is huge because it is truly a gateway state, with a Democratic North and a Republican South. The Democrats can make huge inroads in 2008. And since it is so close to Washington, it will be that much more important.

More here.