I had to scrouge back to find the Election Day Exit Polls for the ten Senate races worth watching.  The story from various partisan conspiracy theorists is that the exit polls have not correlated more or less precisely with the election outcome as of late, indicating chicanery.  Thus, Mary Mattalin is said to have told Bush early on the evening of Election day 2004 that he had lost. 

For 2006, the exit polls hew to within one percent of the results in all but two races.  To review these exit polls:

VIRGINIA

D: 52 …
R: 47 …

RHODE ISLAND

D: 53
R: 46

PENNSYLVANIA

D: 57
R: 42

OHIO

D: 57
R: 43

NEW JERSEY

D: 52
R: 45

MONTANA

D: 53
R: 46

MISSOURI

D: 50
R: 48

MARYLAND

D: 53
R: 46

TENNESSEE

D: 48
R: 51

ARIZONA

D: 46
R: 50

I am not going to bother to find the actual results, but the two that did not correlate within one percentage point are Virginia and Montana.  Coincidentally, or not coincidentally as the case may be, those were the two races that were decided by razor thin margins and that we left Election Day with an open question as to whether or not the results would be contested.  The losing candidates, Republicans Conrad Burns and George Allen, let the result stand, and conceded.

So the conspiracy theory, in the same vein that the results of the exit polls in 2004 were indeed the correct tally, are that these are the exit poll results here are indeed the correct tallies — which is to say, the Republican Party stole these two elections in order to keep control of the Senate, but were just not able to steal or disappear quite enough votes — the Democrat passed the five or six percent window that the genius Karl Rove, and you are entitled to your math but remember — he has “the math” – had set up.

I will say that these two races are the races I had the most emotional investment in insofar as I’m a member of Team Democrat.  And the reasons are going to seem a bit esoteric.  Montana is the Democrats’ magical gateway into the West, as everyone who gushed over Brian Schweitzer’s Gubernatorial victory knows, and a Jon Tester victory would make that belief a reality.  And Virginia is the Democrats’ great hope to chip into the “Solid Republican” South and make part of that their own, and Jim Webb was the best hope to move that forward.  My view of the map seemed a little polly-anna, maybe, but maybe doesn’t right now.

Or maybe that depends on whether you want to believe these two candidates won by 6 points or a couple thousands.  Or maybe it doesn’t.

I think a good thing to do is to review some articles from various pundits from the summer when Webb was nominated for the Senate run.  The conventional wisdom, a conventional wisdom of a sort that befuddles me not so much because it is/was wrong but because it’s meaningless in its paramoters, is that it is good that the Democrats nominated Webb because he will make Allen sweat a little and force him to exercise his campaigning skills, which will make him a better campaigner for this presidential run he’s engaging in right now.  George Will sticks out in my mind as someone who wrote that article.  It is curious, because either an opponent is strong enough that he can win or he’s too weak that he cannot win — there is no middle ground here, this imaginary middle ground where George Will and other pundits were hewing to back in the Summer.

One last note: Both Webb and Tester were grass-roots (and, I hate this term, “net roots”) backed candidates who defeated the early Democratic Party-picked options, though the Democratic Party quickly rolled behind Webb when they decided that, yes, however remote, Virginia might be won.  The candidates they defeated in the primary would have lost, which means that the Democratic Party would not have the Senate Majority right now without those two challengers.  Make of that what you will.

A man stops at a stop light, looking like a person I’m supposed to know but can’t quite figure, and waves the “Ted Kulongoski” sign, smiling broadly.  I shrug and smirk.  Two days late for politicking, I figure.

A man behind me shouts out “Boo!  Boo!  Now go pay my taxes!  Boo!  Boo!”

I heard something yesterday that I found striking, and in the context of some jelling conventional wisdom something that punches back.  The oncoming Democratic Majority in the House is the first House Majority that is not shored up by, or as the case may be held up with, a majority of the seats in the South.

Working through that information, I can extrapulate even further back.  With two exceptions, this is the first House Majority of that type since the year 1930, when the Democrats took over Congress after the Great Market Collapse and the onslaught of the Great Depression.  The two exceptions are the famous “Do Nothing Congress” of the Republicans, elected in 1946 due to Truman fatigue and tossed aside when Truman won his improbable election by mercilessly attacking Congress, and the four year period following the 1950 election to the 1954 election.  The Democrats had complete control over the Solid South, which switched party control in terms of majority when the Republicans won Congress in 1994.

Keep that in mind as we consider the late punditing that the Democrats’ victory came with a batch of conservative victories of politicans who are aping Republicans, befitting the hopeful spin from Republicans that the Democrats remain losers.

Looking down the list of the nine new Democratic Senators, and this doesn’t make sense at all.  (Actually, strike that.  Eight new Democratic Senators and one… SOCIALIST, which adds to the point.)  I suppose you have Bob Casey, Jr, famously recruited as a sop for social conservatives.  Beyond that, you look at Jim Webb square-eyed, but I am hard-pressed to pick out a hot-button issue of a liberal litmus test variety that Webb is on the other side on.  (He defends gay marriage in Virginia, for crying out loud.)  The punditing keeps landing on the issue of gun control, and I guess bully for an issue that hasn’t been pushed in over a decade.

You have better luck with this premise in the House.  Indeed, a handful of “blue dog Democrats” have been elected.  As have all the other varieties of Democrats.

I owe this thought to a blogger from dailykos, a little bit of historical perspective.  The current Conservative Democrats have nothing to the old Democratic Conservatives, also known as “Dixiecrats”.  If the current “blue dog” Democrats put a lease on what our liberal Democratic committee chairs can do, consider what the positively Reactionary Democrats (who chaired those committees) put a leash on up to — oh, I don’t know — 1964.  Start with stopping a piece of anti-lynching legislation in 1938 and go from there to curtailing  and watering down forward-stepping civil rights legislation in the 1950s.

Example: Ellison D. “Cotton Ed” Smith of South Caarolina who stormed out of the Democratic Convention in 1936 because a black minister was delivering an invocation, shouting “By God, he’s as black as melted midnight.”

The current coalition differs substantially from that coalition, and one has to say that’s a lot better deal.

I remember clicking past Rush Limbaugh’s television show on election day 1994, which was broadcast opposite one of the halves of David Letterman, if I recall.  It was filmed earlier in the day — I think just after his radio program, so he did not have any way of knowing just how big a night it would be for his team.  He focused in on some visual and audio mockery of Texas Governor, and endangered Democratic incumbent Ann Richards, throwing spitballs out of her stump speeches.  She would lose the election to George W. Bush.

I made sure to catch him the next night, out of a sense of curiosity.  Limbaugh was wearing a formal three-piece suit.  Really, it was a minimalistic performance on his part — all he had to do was read various election results, and let the studio audience cheer.

In 1998, my high school Civics teacher had the question on the daily current events quiz “Who, in general, won?”  The answer was “Democrats”.  In going over the answers, and the news, he made the comment “Actually, it really was a good night for them; it really was.  You can’t say it had anything to do with them, though.”  I disagreed and continue to disagree with the first part of that equation: it was a marginally good night for the Democrats.  They won a few House seats.  1994 was a good mid-term election night for a political party; this — granted, bucked a historical trend, but didn’t really sway either way the relative power-relationship between the two parties.  The Democrats chipped away a few House seats for 1996, under the leadership of Dick Gephardt, did so again in 1998, and again in 2000.  The trend slid the other way from there.  I came to think that a political party really never going to win and re-win the House by slow chipping aways of seats — they’d have to have an election result such as 1994, or as it turned out, 2006.

NPR had two political pundits — the Democrats represented by EJ Dionne and the Republicans represented by somebody from The Weekly Standard.  It was obvious from the start that The Weekly Standard pundit had to churn harder to come up with a spin.  “I don’t see a trend yet.  It’s too early to notice a spin”, he said after the first few states came in with several results favoring the Democrats.  He had to find some solace in the Lieberman — Lamont race.  “It’s interesting to note that Lieberman’s victory came with people who attend church regularly.”  Sure, why not?  “There seems to be something here in Connecticut where Lieberman has coat-tails that are bringing in the moderate Republicans, who are hanging in there.”  And then the kicker came when Nancy Pelosi was announced to be, mathematically speaking, the new Speaker of the House — the number of Democratic pick-ups stood at 17.  “The two endangered Democrats in Georgia might bring it down to 15.”

I’m sure he strained a lot less in 1994 to say things.  Or maybe he was sitting in Rush Limbaugh’s studio audience.

One positive trend of the current election is that finally, finally, finally, the Oregon state Democratic Party has pushed aside Art Alexakis, front man for the band Everclear, as the major celebrity rock man for youth outreach.  I am pretty sure that Art Alexakis — with or without Everclear, a band that I guess is malleable anyway – has toured every college in Oregon since 1996 with the Democratic candidates in tow, sponsored by College Democrats — and sang their hit songs interspersed with the politicians’ speeches.  I’m sure the one I saw, in 2000, was the high-light of this side-career of Alexakis’s — he invited a confrontation with some Naderite protestors.  It’s all downhill from that, and come to think of it it’s all downhill for Alexakis’s career — a big thing in the middle 90s, not so much today.

Alexakis’s role came largely due to a lack of anyone else to fit the role.  I think the torch has been passed — maybe for a brief tenure, maybe for a longer tenure — to Storm Large, recent contestant on the reality program and rockized version of American Idol — Rockstar Supernova.  She made a robo-call on behalf of Ted Kulongoski.

You must always find your way to change.  The Youth need something Fresh and New, you know.

I heard this news clip that “critics are questioning the timing” of Saddam Hussein’s conviction.  This is an insane statement.  To “question the timing” presumes a sense of doubt.  I myself am not “questioning” the timing of Saddam Hussein’s conviction, I am stating the timing of Saddam Hussein’s conviction.  Which is to say, when this process started, roughly two years ago, I predicted that he would be convicted the weekend going into the 2006 midterm elections.  There it is!  This didn’t keep me up at night, nor is it keeping me up at night as a partisan horror attack.  It’s just the manner in which this is under US government control, as opposed to — oh, I don’t know — under control of the International War Crimes Tribunal.  (There were statements made by right-wing cranks that bellowing “Why isn’t France [France as stand-in for all those squishy European nations] involved in this?”  The reason being — the US threw it out of international rules, and did it themselves — under the guise of “Iraqi rule”.  Figure out the political repercussions yourownself as per your own personal views on politics.)

So then there were the clips of Bush at some campaign rallies proclaiming the greatness of this conviction.  An Independent judiciary in Iraq, that which so many people never believed could happen.  The Iraqis are Standing Up, if the US is not standing Down ah well.  I cannot stress this too much:  Bush is all yell-y.  These speeches leave the crowd in thunderous applause.  Who are these people?  Are these the people who believe the words of Tony Snow about how ridiculous these questions (re: statements) are and how in the realm of tin-foil hat territory they are, as though nothing here was set up by the American government.

Bush’s approval ratings are back up to 40%, I hear.  I believe it’s a sign of submergence on the part of a significant number of Republicans needing to stand by Team Republican — always a foil, always a foil, always a foil, that being San Francisco Liberal Nancy Pelosi and a batch of potential urban and liberal committee chairs.  We await tommorrow to see what this means:

ROVE: I’m looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I’m entitled to THE math.

ROVE: I said The math.

Which is to say, in my math 2 + 2 = 4.  With “The Math”, 2 + 2 evidentally equals “Republican Victory”.  I presume that this is that there famed “New Math” I used to hear people rail against.