Happy Post-Election Day

What a great 24 hours since the polls closed in the midterm elections. The news comes in last that the Democrats were predicted to take control of the House. Awesome.

The Senate was looking iffy, though. The Dems picked up a few seats, but too many races still too close to call to say what would happen. It seemed like the same number of people were predicting the Democrats pulling it off as were predicting that they wouldn’t.

Then we have today’s Donald Rumsfeld resignation. I have to assume that it was in the works for a whlie, and they were just holding off until after the election so they wouldn’t influence anything. I can’t imagine President Bush actually responding to the will of the people by getting rid of Rumsfeld in a reaction to the election results. But however it happened, it’s great news. Rediculously long overdue, but any kind of improvement is so unexpected from the Bush administration that everyone’s still pretty excited.

If it had been a more rational president than Dubya, I wonder if people would be complaining more loudly. “What took you so long,” and so on. But with Bush it’s just such a shock that there was a change in the first place, that nobody’s going to go looking an unexpected gift horse in the mouth.

And then the news comes in a few hours ago: everyone’s calling the Virginia Senator race for Webb. Allen’s people are saying that they don’t think they’d be able to find another 7,000 votes for Mr. Macaca in a recount, and Allen “has no intention of dragging this out.”

Now that’s excellent news. I was fully expecting Virginia to take forever to be settled, being that a recount wouldn’t be done for another month or so. But I guess they figure that Webb’s lead is big enough that it would be pointless, so maybe we’re all done. By Thursday we might be able to say for sure that the Democrats have taken back both houses of Congress. Wow.

Of course, I hate to say it, but it really took you long enough, America. Where were you two years ago when you re-elected George W. Bush? How could you do that? Sure, this is a good sign that you might have come to your senses, but isn’t it a little too late? The damage has been done.

By the way, did anyone hear Bush talking today at his press conference? Let me quote: “I believe that’s what the American people want. Somehow it seeped in their conscious that, you know, my attitude was just simply ’stay the course.’” Gee, I wonder how that could have happened. Maybe the fact that you haven’t said anything else about Iraq other than “stay the course” in the past year?