After reading all the articles of voting machines in Florida marking votes for democrats as votes for republicans, letters in California aimed at intimidating Latinos to keep them from the voting booth, the misinformation campaign against blacks in Georgia, and all the other dirty tricks the republicans did I was kind of dreading this election. When you added George Bush’s and Karl Roves’ smugness and certainty about winning these elections I started to get paranoid.
All the conspiracy theories about stolen votes, hacked voting computers, and police intimidation at the polls started to sound really credible. I was starting to believe that the exit polls would be mysteriously off and the republicans would somehow hold on to a majority.
Happily I was way off and wrong. I spent most of the day doing the “Rick Santorum is a soon to be unemployed asshole” Dance. Then I got to do the “Virginia looks locked up” Dance. Finally as I lay panting and exhausted I caught a second wind and did the “Don Rumsfeld is gonna meet Santorum down at the unemployment office” Dance. I’m still doing that one.

As I thought about it and read several op-eds I am cautiously saying that it might have been better if the republicans held onto the senate. There are still going to be a lot of problems investigating Bush. There will be a lot of court cases and they will take time to be decided. It’s going to take a while to restore the office of independent counsel. It might take two years just to get the ball rolling. I wouldn’t mind have the republicans to blame for that again in two years. When the next third of the senate seats go up in two years it might swing a wider majority.
But who knows what will happen in the next two years. If the dems do something about Iraq then it’s for the better. Political gamesmanship can’t justify dragging that out any longer than it has to last. And maybe there will be even more republican indictments.