Democrats Take House AND Senate

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by sadaist
Congrats Dems. I predicted wrongly. Virginia & Montana are still up in the air, but that doesn't really effect the bigger picture. Now that you have control of the house, I hope government doesn't hit a stalemate with nothing happening. 2 years of checks & balances or 2 years of subpoenas, investigations & special committees.

See NeoCons......

It can be done.

You can lose graciously, admit you were wrong, and look forward to seeing how things get done now....

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by Guitar Shark
The vote had nothing to do with Howard Dean, and everything to do with President Bush and the recent Republican scandals.

Hey FORD, where are your complaints about Diebold today?

1- How do you know with certainty, counselor?

2- Because we won, no need to blame Diebold :D



I personally think it was a combination of things. Howard Dean's new focus, BushCO's terrible performances, and a Republican Led Congress of Corruption.

There's plenty of credit to go around :D

[Guitar Shark]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
1- How do you know with certainty, counselor?

One might ask you the same question, referring to the title of this thread

[redfire]

Originally posted by FORD
The Busheep on this board (and others) ridiculed Dr. Dean when he described his 50 state strategy, which the whore media reduced to a soundbite about "guys in pick up trucks with gun racks and Confederate flags". The Busheep also said that Evangelicals would never vote Democrat.

Well guess what? 1/3 of Evangelicals voted for Democratic candidates yesterday And a lot of formerly "red" states are looking damn blue this morning.

It also helps when our party doesn't put up socially liberal candidates in states that are conervative. So if knowing that the triangle peg doesn't fit in a square hole is a reason for lavishing praises on someone, HOP's 2 year old daughter deserves to be crowned a genius.

But, as a Conservative Dem, I can say I was right about how things would work out.

[Seshmeister]

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by Guitar Shark
One might ask you the same question, referring to the title of this thread

Well argued indeed :D


We have the Senate.

[FORD]

Originally posted by Guitar Shark
One might ask you the same question, referring to the title of this thread

Because the votes have been counted and the Democrats are ahead?

I don't think anybody expects Burns or MaKKKaKKKa to win a "recount".

Unless Rove buses those Miami courthouse riot bozos in again......

[Guitar Shark]

Originally posted by FORD
Because the votes have been counted and the Democrats are ahead?

I don't think anybody expects Burns or MaKKKaKKKa to win a "recount".

Dr. Love was right... Bizarroworld.

Hey, few people would be happier than me if the Senate changes hands... but I will wait until it actually happens before I celebrate.

[knuckleboner]

Originally posted by FORD
What?? Did Macaca stuff ballots in a turkey or something?

Last I heard, this was out of recount range, which apparently is only .5% in VA

the current margin is 0.31%, or about 7,300 votes, with 3 precincts (out of 2,243) remaining.

virginia law permits a state-funded recount if the margin is 0.5% or less and pemits the candidate to pay for recount if the margin is 1.0% or less.

there is NO CHANCE that the 3 remaining precincts would be able to move the margin above 1.0%. and unless all 3 precincts voted 100% for webb, there's no chance that the final tally moves above 0.5%.


there will be a recount. without question.

[Guitar Shark]

kb, any idea how those remaining 3 precincts will end up? Are they typically conservative or liberal precincts, if you know?

[Soul Reaper]

well, I expected the Republicans to fix voting again....

well, they probably tried and failed or just realised that they were gonna get fucked anyway...

[Hardrock69]

Democrats won Montana. Only Virginia is left. You KNOW Chimpy is desperately trying to steal the Virginia Senate race. Without a win there he is FUCKED!!!

Mwuhahahahahahahaha.......

CHIMPEACHMENT NOW!!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061108/ap_on_el_ge/eln_election_rdp

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Democrats won a cliffhanger race in Montana on Wednesday that brought them to the brink of control of the Senate, after Americans sick of scandal and weary of war ended the Republican majority in the House.


With Democrats now assured of 50 Senate seats, the battle for outright control came down to Virginia, where the party's candidate, Jim Webb, held a small lead.

For Republicans, it was an election that started out grim and got only grimmer with the new day. First, voters brought down the Republican House majority after 12 years in power, and gave Democrats a majority of governorships for the first time in just as long.

Then Senate control began slipping away, the narrow GOP majority ground down to nothing, protected only by Vice President
Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote if the contest ended at 50-50.

Democrats hoped to shape a 51-49 majority with a Virginia victory for Webb, a former Navy secretary under
Ronald Reagan. Webb led by fewer than 9,000 votes out of more than 2.3 million cast, and with the margin so small and so much on the line, GOP Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record) was not conceding. If a recount is held it could take weeks to be conducted by a panel of judges.

Electoral officials were canvassing the unofficial results Wednesday, and both parties had teams ready to monitor and intervene in the event of a recount, anticipating the process could stretch into next month.

In Montana, Democrat Jon Tester, an organic grain farmer who lost three fingers in a meat grinder, prevailed in a protracted contest with three-term Sen. Conrad Burns (news, bio, voting record), who was weakened politically by his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Tester held a 3,128-vote lead over Burns with only one county left to count its votes. That county had fewer than 1,000 votes to report. An AP canvass of Montana counties estimated there were not enough provisional ballots still to be counted for Burns to overcome his deficit.

That meant the election of 48 Democratic senators as well as two Democratic-voting independents — Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

A succession of tainted Republicans lost seats as their leaders lost power, a stinging referendum on the ways of Washington. A large majority of voters surveyed across the country said their disgust with corruption influenced their choice.

Setting a standard her party will be judged on in elections two years from now, speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi promised: "Democrats intend to lead the most honest, the most open and the most ethical Congress in history."

The California Democrat was on the cusp of making history herself, as the first woman speaker.
President Bush called her Wednesday morning to congratulate her.

Democrats took 20 of 36 governorship races to give themselves a majority of top state jobs — 28 — for the first time in a dozen years. New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maryland and Arkansas went into the Democratic column.

Republicans hung on to Florida's governorship, with Charlie Crist prevailing in a race to succeed Bush's brother Jeb, and Bob Corker won a closely watched Senate contest in Tennessee, denying Democrat Harold Ford Jr.'s bid to become the first black senator from the South in more than a century.

But the night was one Republicans wished they could forget. For a two-term president who has led with Senate and House control for most of his time in office, easing the way for his tax cuts and war policy, it was an unaccustomed dose of defeat.

The best face his spokesman could put on it was that some people saw it coming. It was not a "a slap-on-the-forehead kind of shock," Tony Snow said. Of the results, he said: "They have not gone the way he would have liked."

Control of the Senate came down to two races once considered safely Republican until gaffes by the two GOP candidates.

Burns, 71, first elected in 1988 as a folksy, backslapping outsider, came under siege as a top recipient of campaign contributions from Abramoff. He did himself no favors, either, when he confronted members of a wildfire-fighting team and accused them of doing a bad job.

Allen, a former Virginia governor, struggled for months to get his campaign back on stride after he used the obscure racial slur "macaca" to introduce a man of Indian descent to an all-white rally.

Across the country, voters expressed exasperation with the criminal convictions, the investigations and the recent sexual e-mail scandal that befell Congress over the past two years.

In surveys conducted at polling places, three out of four voters said corruption and scandalous behavior in Congress made them more likely to vote Democratic.

Also in the surveys, about six in 10 voters disapproved of the
Iraq war and only a third believed it had improved long-term security in the United States.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., echoing Pelosi, said the election shows "we must change course in Iraq."

More broadly, he said, Americans "have come to the conclusion, as we did some time ago, that a one-party town simply doesn't work."

Without losing any seats of their own, Democrats captured 27 GOP-held seats and were leading for two more, assuring them of control 12 years after a Republican rout brought a new generation of conservatives into office.

"Unprepared members were swallowed up by the sour national environment," New York Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the House GOP's election effort, said on CNN. He was re-elected.

Democrats also defeated four Republican incumbents in the Senate — Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, Mike DeWine in Ohio, Jim Talent in Missouri and Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island — who covered the spectrum from conservative to moderate.

Indiana was particularly cruel to House Republicans. Reps. John Hostettler, Chris Chocola and Mike Sodrel all lost in a state where Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' unpopularity compounded the dissatisfaction with Bush.

One of the biggest surprises of the night was Republican Rep. Jim Leach (news, bio, voting record)'s defeat in Iowa after a career that spanned 30 years, losing to Dave Loebsack, a college professor making his first run for elective office. The two parties spent lavishly on television commercials in dozens of districts deemed competitive — but not that one.

Scandal took an undeniable toll on the Republicans. Democrat Zack Space won the race to succeed Bob Ney, who pleaded guilty to corruption this fall in the Abramoff scandal. Republican Rep. John Sweeney (news, bio, voting record) lost his seat in New York several days after reports that he had roughed up his wife — an allegation she denied.

Republicans also lost the seat that Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record) had held. He resigned on Sept. 29 after being confronted with sexually explicit computer messages he had written to teenage pages.

Rep. Don Sherwood (news, bio, voting record) lost despite apologizing to the voters for a long-term affair with a much younger woman; and Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), also from Pennsylvania, was denied a new term after he became embroiled in a corruption investigation.

The GOP also lost the Texas seat once held by former Majority Leader
Tom DeLay.

Surveys of voters suggested Democrats were winning the support of independents with almost 60 percent support, and middle-class voters were leaving Republicans behind.

About six in 10 voters said the nation is on the wrong track and disapproved of the way Bush is handling his job. Voters in all groups were more inclined to vote for Democratic candidates than for Republicans.

Over half of the voters registered dissatisfaction with the way Republican leaders in Congress dealt with Foley. They voted overwhelming Democratic in House races, by a margin of 3-to-1.

The surveys were taken by The Associated Press and the networks.

History worked against the GOP, too. Since World War II, the party in control of the White House has lost an average 31 House seats and six Senate seats in the second midterm election of a president's tenure in office.

More than the party-run battle for control of Congress and the statehouses was at stake.

South Dakota voters rejected the toughest abortion law in the land — a measure that would have outlawed the procedure under almost any circumstances.

In a comeback unlike any other, Lieberman won a new term in Connecticut — dispatching Democrat Ned Lamont. Lieberman, a supporter of Bush's war policy, ran as an independent but will side with the Democrats in organizing the new Senate when he returns to Washington.

Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton coasted to a second Democratic term in New York, winning roughly 70 percent of the vote in a warm-up to a possible run for the White House in 2008.

In Ohio, DeWine lost to Rep. Sherrod Brown (news, bio, voting record), a liberal seven-term lawmaker. Chafee, the most liberal Republican in the Senate and an opponent of the war, fell to Sheldon Whitehouse, former state attorney general.

Among the GOP losers, Hostettler, Santorum and DeWine all won their seats in the Republican landslide of 1994 — the year the GOP grabbed control of the House and Senate from the Democrats and launched the Republican revolution.

"It's very hard to watch," lamented Dick Armey, who was House majority leader in those heady GOP days.

Democrats piled up gains in the nation's statehouses.

In Ohio, Rep. Ted Strickland (news, bio, voting record) defeated Republican Ken Blackwell with ease to become the state's first Democratic governor in 16 years. Deval Patrick triumphed over Republican Kerry Healey in Massachusetts, and will become the state's first black chief executive. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer won the New York governor's race in a landslide.

Voters in Vermont made Sanders, an independent, the winner in a Senate race, succeeding retiring Sen.
James Jeffords. Brooklyn-born with an accent to match, Sanders is a socialist who will side with Democrats, as he did reliably in the House.

In Maryland, Democratic Rep. Ben Cardin captured an open Senate seat, defeating Lt. Gov. Michael Steele.

[knuckleboner]

all 3 are in typically republician leaning districts.

but i think at least 1 is a conditional absentee ballot precinct that may not have any (it's the 2nd one, and had 0 in 2004).

given the general 52-some% turnout, margins of victory should be 100-300 in each precinct, max.

webb should finish, pre-recount, up about 6,500+.

[redfire]

Originally posted by knuckleboner
all 3 are in typically republician leaning districts.

but i think at least 1 is a conditional absentee ballot precinct that may not have any (it's the 2nd one, and had 0 in 2004).

given the general 52-some% turnout, margins of victory should be 100-300 in each precinct, max.

webb should finish, pre-recount, up about 6,500+.

What areas are they? I mean, are they in the Va Beach area, or Northern Va or what?

[Hardrock69]

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/VA/S/01/county.000.html

Funny...shows 100% reporting, but that they are all "processing results", meaning Diebold is scrambling to try to hack as many machines as possible to ensure Der Fuehrer's demands are carried out.