Well, the Republicans both over performed and under-performed for my expectations.
60+ seats is a huge wave one that normally crushes everything beneath it. However, the senate remains in Democratic hands the only question is by how much. Oregon may go Democratic still. Alaska? No way, but right now the Republican and tea-party favorite Joe Miller is behind.
I was surprised to see the democrats hold onto both Colorado and Nevada. I though the wave would be strong enough to sweep both states, but apparently you can be too outside the main stream for even this wave. Frankly I am happy to have Angle and O’Donnell loss their bids.
Now the hard part come in for the Republicans. If the tea Party truly is an independent movement and not the Republican Party in Fancy Dress they are going to expect that this new Congress do more than just snipe from the sidelines. However if this Congress moves against big budget items that are popular — such as Medicare and Social Security — which they will have to do to balance the budget, they’ll see their number tumbles.
As we heard often during the health care debates the Senior Citizens hates socialized Medicine and love Medicare.
There are of course people already talking about what this mean for 2012. Dudes. it is way too early to speak about that.
In Florida we aslo passed two (state) constitutional ammendments that will end redistricting. (Yeah!)
Unfortunately, we (not me. Once again, no one I voted for won.) voted in Scott and Rubio, a couple of tea party people who really spell doom for many of the things that are good in Florida. Scott promises to be especially bad for education, as the only person who stood between schools and the execrable SB6 last year was a Governor’s veto. (Thank you, Mr. Crist. I did NOT forget you in the voting booth! It was not only because of that, either.) I expect that we will now have to explain why a student who comes to our high school with a third grade reading level isn’t passing the state 9th and 10th grade level tests. We will also have our salaries dependent on how the students do, which is wrong since we don’t have control over even most of the contingencies that contribute to test success.
The Republican Party has been openly questioning for some time whether education should be the responsibility of the government or not. I guess in Florida we are about to find out what it is like when education is not the direct job of government. In these almost impossible economic times, I guess I need ot figure out what I am going to do next because if these folks get what they want, I won’t be working for long.
Better yet Prop 20 passed so California might lead the way on ending the obscene practice of gerrymandering.
Bad about the Senate. I’m worried about future court appointments.
On the other hand the hammering the Dems took at State level elections are more good news for the Republicans because of reapportionment.