Wednesday, November 06, 2002 BUSH'S TRIUMPH: I should have trusted my gut. We all should have believed the late polls. We don't have the full results yet, but it seems clear, as I write, that the Republicans will gain in the House and win back the Senate. For a first term president who didn't win a plurality to win in a mid-term election with a deeply troubled economy is, quite simply, an astonishing victory. I guess I'd been too busy telling others not to under-estimate Bush that I under-estimated him myself. Yes, local issues mattered. But the swing is too uniform to be interpreted solely by particulars. This was a vote for Bush, for prosecuting the war on terror, for the tax cut. More important, it was a vote against the hollow negativism, cowardice and mediocrity of the current Democratic Party. They have nothing to say; and that matters. Their predicament is deeper than this result suggests. Since Bush passed his tax cut and since September 11, the Democrats have been cornered. A purely defensive strategy - taking both issues off the table - led them to this result. An offensive strategy - against war and for raising taxes - would have delivered an even worse one. Or they could have come up with a tough but different anti-terror plan and a positive economic message. But they didn't. So they lost. One other factor is the blandness and decrepitude of their leaders. Daschle and Gephardt are pathetic. McAuliffe is a nightmare. When the Dems needed new blood, they found Mondale and Lautenberg. This is not a party with self-confidence or much of a short-term future. Bush, because of what he did and what the Democrats did not do, now has a remarkable mastery over the polity. He has enormous leverage against Iraq; and this vote will deeply strengthen his position abroad. I hope he uses that mandate wisely and bravely. I also believe that that is part of the reason the Republicans did so well. People know we're at war. They trust the president. They wanted to show him support. Many factors contributed to tonight's historically rare event. But the president's conduct of the war was surely the central one, as it will be for the foreseeable future.

NO MORE EXIT POLLS: Man, I loved their absence. Now we even have to think about why people voted the way they did. And election night itself was so much more enjoyable (even though I seem to be getting some sort of flu).

SEE? I told you Dick Morris always gets it wrong.

ODDS AND ENDS: I have to say I found the way that Chambliss defeated Cleland and Baucus bested Taylor to be dispiriting events. On the bright side, Mitt Romney was clearly the better candidate in Massachusetts; and voters in that liberal state also voted to support English immersion and came extremely close to abolishing the state income tax. Very encouraging. Townsend and Forrester were both terrible candidates who deserved to lose. I'm pleased the oleaginous Hutchinson in Arkansas got done in as well. I guess I'll have to sleep some more before I hear about Mondale. But I'm still hoping ...

THEY JUST DON'T GET IT, DO THEY? More embarrassment for the New York Times. The Johnny Apple piece of "news analysis" this morning is a classic of windy stupidity. The real news from yesterday will surely be the historic achievement of a Republican president seeing his own party gain seats in both the House and Senate. But for Mr Apple, it was all just depressing, listless, uninspired, boring. Of course it was: Two years after the most bizarre presidential election in American history was decided by the Supreme Court, 14 months after the unspeakable horror of terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the nation voted yesterday in a mood of disenchantment and curious disconnection from the political system. The American public may be faced with a series of potentially life-altering issues, including the prospect of war with Iraq, the possibility of further assaults on national security at home, the reality of a prolonged slump in the stock market and the uncertainty of the economic outlook. But the campaign that led up to the balloting was notably lifeless and cheerless, with pep rallies devoid of pep and stump speeches that stirred few voters.Just how can you be this out of touch? This follows the Times' complete botch of their own poll, which predicted a clear Republican drift in the last days of the campaign. The Times buried their scoop, killing the news, in favor of their own partisan pabulum. If this is what the Democrats read in that political cocoon of theirs, no wonder they didn't see what was coming. I'm beginning to think that Howell Raines is secretly part of Karl Rove's masterplan.

KRISTOF CHANNELS SULLY: Eventually, the mindless bitterness that makes up the columns of Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman would have to appal even their fellow Democratic partisans. Nick Kristof's column yesterday reads like a potage de Sullivan. Now what Kristof has to understand is that it's exactly that shrill, dumb, negative leftism that helped Bush to such an historic victory. Just don't count on it. - 2:27:53 AM

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2002