Where Do We Go Now?

The era of the Republican majority is over.

In the most symbolic victory of last night, Nick Lampson won his race for the House in Texas. Tom DeLay's old seat, the one from which he was working to create a permanent Republican majority, is now in the hands of a Democrat. How sweet is that?

It looks right now that the Democrats will have won 28 House seats, with the Senate still undecided as recounts take place in two contested races -- in Montana and in Virginia. The Democrat is in the lead, however, in both races as of this moment.

Have we gotten what we wanted? Is this the political tsunami that I've been predicting for the past year and a half?

Well, as the old saying goes, if it isn't, it sure as hell looks like it.

There were some disappointments, of course. While Nick Lampson's win in Texas was particularly satisfying, two of the races I was following with great interest (Tammy Duckworth's House race in Illinois and Ned Lamont's bid to unseat "Holy Joe" Lieberman in Connecticut) fell short.

And while some conservatives are sure to claim that these results weren't nearly as bad as they could have been, that it's normal for a president's party to lose seats in the sixth year of an administration, and that this shows how little America trusts liberals (I think I've just written Ann Coulter's next column for her), the fact is that this is a great day for Democrats, and yesterday's vote was a stinging repudiation of President Bush and the Republican Congress.

That's enough for now. Now we have to figure out where to go from here.

Tom Moran