Meanwhile in other voting....

Results

All in all, not a bad night at the polls. Its way too early and way too many instances of voting irregularities to sift through before challenges can be raised over the results in the close races that changed winners in the late counting i.e. VA-Sen, MT-Sen and CT-02. After two national elections in which Republicans made vital gains long after the polls close, I had begun to wonder if perhaps fetuses only come out to vote after midnight. The late reversal against Farrell in CT-04 is unfortunate...I made a lot of calls there and was getting such a good vibe. That flip of two or three percent after midnight is a pattern I was hoping not to see but I have heard of no irregularities in CT, certainly nothing on the scale of the [depressingly perennial ] Ohio election SNAFU or the obvious and definitely criminal vote disruption in CO and voter intimidation at some AZ polling places.

Interpretation

I still maintain that the biggest unreported issue being decided yesterday was whether or not the nation possesses a conscience any more. But you will hear plenty about the "meaning" of it all from better informed commentors than me. For instance, it is being said that as issues, gay marriage lost and stem cell research won. Indeed, gay rights, which shouldn't even have to be a distinct category of civil rights, took a hit from a resurgence of backwardness in several states:

" Residents in South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho, Wisconsin and Virginia voted to define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman."

What about South Dakotans clearly denouncing their proposed abortion ban? Had you already written places like South Dakota off as backward swamps of right wing ignorance? The vote tells us for sure that everybody is stirred up and paying more attention than before. Would have been nice if the environment were better represented in yesterday's voting. I happen to live in that environment and deeply wish to see it healed. Perhaps others live elsewhere. Perhaps the new crop of Democrats will not be so narrowly focused as the Repbulicans they replace. Perhaps.

News sources, other polling.

Although their network is still in my dog house for airing a wingnut hatchet job "documentary" designed to confuse their TV audience, that left-behind child of the body politic, about Bush administration laxity leaving us open to the 9/11 attacks, I still read ABC News' The Note. I take what I read on any ABC website with a grainery of salt [they count 47 Dem senate seats at this hour, TPM counts 49...we will see who is right as these numbers are live and in flux]. But you need to know what sources like that are saying so that when you talk to the politically "normal" who don't feed their political news addictions from liberal blogs, you know where they are coming from. On their main politics page, ABC generally features oportunites for feedback as video uploads, coments and survey questions. The questions typically leave out options I would want so I don't bother with the surveys most of the time. But the reader opinion shown below was a simple thumbs up or thumbs down for a guy who has had his thumb in the eye of one too many generals. The national vote is often spoken of as a "referendum on Iraq". Then the national vote is not clear enough for me in light of the outrageous flow of lies that got us into this futile bloodbath and continue flowing to keep us there. Given some of the slim margins that are being called victories this morning, these lopsided little survey numbers are beyond a "mandate" and more in the realm of an indictment for manslaugther. The body is in the morgue. The blood is on his hands. My only fear is that he alone would suffice as a scapegoat when Cheny, Bush and their whole coterie of lying chicken hawks should all take the fall.