Much of the spin leading up to Tuesday focused on the toxic anti-Republican atmosphere in Ohio -- and rightly so. Voters in the Buckeye State did indeed voice their displeasure with Republican leadership on Tuesday by sending incumbent Republican Senator Mike DeWine down to a 12-point defeat against Democrat Sherrod Brown, and also by choosing Democrat Ted Strickland for Governor over Republican Ken Blackwell by an overwhelming margin of more than 900,000 votes.

With such expectedly lopsided contests at the top of the ticket, it's a bit of surprise to see the results at the Congressional level. In addition to the open seat in the 18th district that was vacated by convicted felon Bob Ney, Republicans were very worried about the prospect of losing three other seats held by Reps. Steve Chabot, Jean Schmidt and especially Deborah Pryce.

If you look at a map of the House seats Republicans lost on Tuesday, however, Ohio stands as one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal evening. Just to the west, in Indiana, three closely watched and competitive races all resulted in the Republican incumbent being swept from office. And next door in the east it was equally bad: Republicans lost four out of five competitive House races in Pennsylvania -- including Melissa Hart in the fourth district sitting right on the border with Ohio.

Despite all of this, the three endangered Republican incumbents in Ohio managed to survive. In Ohio 1, Steve Chabot beat John Cranley with relative ease, 51-46. In the heavily Republican second district, Jean Schmidt squeaked by her opponent by a mere 2,300 votes.

Most impressive of all was the survival of Deborah Pryce, number four in the House Republican leadership. The seven-term Congresswoman representing a marginally Republican district in and around Columbus was targeted early by the DCCC and withstood a withering assault this cycle but still came out on top by 3,536 votes on Tuesday.

All three Republicans are no doubt thankful to have survived this year, though the Congress they will return to will look a lot different than the one they remember.

The Washington Times reports that Michael Steele has been offered the job of replacing Ken Mehlman as Chairman of the RNC. The article also says that Karl Rove "would rather see Mr. Steele serve in the president's Cabinet, perhaps as secretary of Housing and Urban Development." It's not clear that any offer has been made, or which way Steele is leaning. But it is clear that Michael Steele has a very bright future as a national leader of the Republican Party.

In Tennesee, Harold Ford, Jr. now also has to consider his next move. He's clearly a smart, talented guy who, like Steele in Maryland, acquitted himself very well in this year's campaign but came up short. The AP reports on a post-election luncheon in Chatanooga where Ford addressed his supporters and said:

"Don't cry. We will do it again, and it will come out on our side the next time," Rep. Ford said to teary-eyed supporters who mobbed him outside the Innside Restaurant on Chestnut Street.

In an interview, Rep. Ford declined to elaborate on his promise to supporters other than to say, "I'd bet on me running again."

Later on the article says Ford "would not speculate on plans beyond his last weeks in Congress." There are plenty of options open to Ford, and It'll be very interesting to see what he decides to do as he sets up possible future run for elective office.

Incumbent Republican Dave Reichert continues to cling to a small lead over Darcy Burner as both sides lay the groundwork for a possible recount. Burner has already mounted an effort to raise the $100k necessary to pay for a recount if the margin is larger than .5% or 2,000 - in which case a recount becomes mandatory.

The Seattle Times reports that Washington's Secretary of State Sam Reed is predicting 67% turnout for this race which, if accurate, means that more than 60% of the votes have already been counted. Right now Reichert is leading by 3,120 votes or 1.8 percent, but the Seattle PI reports that there may be close to 50,000 absentee votes still left to count in King County. That fact leaves open the potential this race could still flip, but it's looking more and more like Reichert is going to survive.

"I think the people sent our party a message...We've got to recommit ourselves to being the party of conservative reforms." Those are the words of RNC Chair Ken Mehlman, quoted at a CS Monitor breakfast today by The Chicago Tribune's blog, The Swamp.

Here's more:

Asked why he and other party leaders had predicted victory heading into the elections, Mehlman maintained that 30 of the races they were looking at stood "within the margin of error'' in polls heading into Election Day, meaning they could have gone either way with the right effort. He noted that 19 contests were decided by vote-margins of 5,000 or fewer. [snip]

But his party's future depends on recommitting Republicans to core values of reform, he insists.

"The party of reform... to me, it means we are the party that's transforming government to face the problems we have today,'' said Mehlman, pointing to public education, with his party offering parents "more choices in education'' and to immigration. "A welcoming immigration system is consistent with everything we ought to believe in.''

Acknowledging that the Republican Party captured only 30 percent of the Hispanic vote in the midterm elections - down from the mid-40s in the 2004 presidential election, and down from 36 percent in the midterms of 2002 - he said: "It's down, and I'm not happy that it's down.''

The challenge for his party remains reaching out to minorities, and the RNC is committed to doing so, Mehlman said. "America is, every day, less of a white country,'' he said. "We rely too hard on white guys for votes.''

With the Senate hanging in the balance both Conrad Burns and George Allen have done the right thing by conceding their respective races. Hopefully, they have set an example for future politicians in close elections - who lose - of how true statesman and patriots should respect the will of voters and not engage lawyers and the courts in blatant attempts to hold on to power.

Politicians who deliberately and cynically undermine the faith in our elective process do great damage to this country for cheap short-term political gain. Respect for the rule of law and the willingness to live with heartbreaking defeats is critical to the long-term well being of our democratic system of government.

After Democrat and Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett nearly upset Republican Jean Schmidt in the 2005 special election in Ohio's deep-red 2nd Congressional district, much was made of the fact that Democrats, led primarily by Rahm Emanuel, decided to go out and recruit as many candidates as possible with military experience to try and close the gap with Republicans on national security and Iraq.

Newsweek dubbed it "the Vet Strategy" back in December of last year, but the group was more often referred to as the "Fightin' Dems". Tammy Duckworth was the most celebrated of the group, at least at the national level, but the roster included 48 other challengers in House races this year.

Now that the election is over we can ask: how did the Fightin' Dems do? Was there any discernable benefit to the strategy of recruiting candidates with military service in their background? Scrolling through the list of results, the answer seems to be a pretty clear "no."

Here's a quick rundown of the Fightin' Dems who were in competitive races this year. As you can see, five came up a little bit short, and four managed to pull off the upset:

Losers
Tammy Duckworth lost by two points to Peter Roskam in IL-6, 49-51.

Jack Davis lost to Tom Reynolds by two points in NY-26, 49-51.

Charlie Brown came within three points of John Doolittle in CA-4, 46-49.

Eric Massa fell four points short of Randy Kuhl in NY-29, 48-52.

Ken Lucas was in a very tight race in KY-4 but ended up losing by seven, 44-51.

Winners
Tim Walz defeated Gil Gutknecht in MN-1, 53 to 47.

Joe Sestak defeated Curt Weldon in PA-7, 56 to 44.

Patrick Murphy defeated Mike Fitzpatrick in PA-8 by less than 1 percent (about 1,500 votes).

Chris Carney defeated Don Sherwood in PA-10, 53 to 47.

The victories by Sestak and Carney had almost nothing to do with them and everything to do with the troubles of their opponents. There's really no indication that the status of being a veteran helped any of the winners. Conversely, it's not at all clear in the races "Fightin Dems" lost that another candidate without military service wouldn't have run equally as well or better.

Discontent with Republican incumbents over Iraq (and other issues) benefited Democrats whether they were a veteran like Walz in MN-1, a seventh-grade teacher with no political experience like Nancy Boyda in conservative KS-2, or a hardcore leftwing activist like Carol Shea-Porter in NH-1. It really didn't matter.

There is one exception. I think you could make a persuasive argument that Jim Webb's status as a decorated war veteran made just enough of a difference in Virginia to prove decisive. Again, that race had as much to do with Allen's stumbles and mistakes as anything, but in state like Virginia which has such strong ties to the U.S. military and certain amount of reverence for military tradition, Jim Webb's reputation as a one of the most decorated war heroes of his generation (coupled with his conservative stances on other issues, of course) really did provide him with an advantage.

So, to sum up: the "Fightin' Dem" strategy proved not to matter almost every single instance on Tuesday, except in the one case where it did. And what a momentous case it ended up being.

Given the final result of the evening, it's a bit surprising to see that of the 13 vulnerable open seats Republicans defended yesterday, they actually managed to win five of them. Here is how the list breaks down:

As you can see, three of the seats on this list were lost to scandal and/or corruption. Wisconsin 8 is the only one that jumps out as a seat Republicans are probably disappointed in losing.

Now here are the five seats Republicans defended:

As I wrote earlier today, I agree with the analysis that Iraq was the dominant factor in last night's election. But not every race fits neatly into that box, as is evident by looking at this list. With the exception of FL-13, where the Republican underperformed the district's Cook PVI (Partisan Voting Index), the Republican margin of victory in the other four races met or exceeded the partisan orientation of the district.

That's not what one would expect to see - especially with respect to open seats in only moderately Republican leaning districts - given anti-Republican tide we saw in motion last night. But for whatever reason, the Democratic surge didn't materialize in these districts. There are any number of factors at play in each race that could help account for this, including financial advantage, quality of challenger, and superior GOTV.

But even among that group, Illinois 6 stands out as an anomaly. In an anti-Republican year with Iraq as a backdrop to the entire election, how did Republican Peter Roskam defeat a well-financed, double amputee veteran of the war in a moderate GOP district? I know Roskam had a superior GOTV effort, but my hunch is that he - and probably the others in the group of open seats as well - may have benefitted from the fact they weren't incumbents this year and thus were spared, to at least some degree, the wrath that voters inflicted on Republicans elsewhere around the country last night.

(NOTE: The original version of this post accidentally omitted CO-7 as a vulnerable Republican open seat won by the Dems on Tuesday.)

Well - last night surprised me!

I was not a lot wrong. But I was wrong enough. Why did this happen? In retrospect, I see now that I made two analytical mistakes - one theoretical and one methodological.

(1) I overestimated the extent to which our electoral institutions would mitigate GOP losses. I never doubted that (a) the public was in a foul mood, (b) they blamed Bush and (c) this would induce GOP losses.

However, my intuition at the time was that, at least in the House, this would reduce the extent to which the GOP would suffer losses. It did. But not as much as I thought it would. They lost about 10 or so more seats than I thought they would, and about 2 seats more than my 95% range of possibilities. The error here was my overestimation of the change in our electoral structure that 1994 produced.

As it turns out, Charlie Cook did not jump the shark. I did! I let my "institutional bias" take me right over a damned shark! Sorry, Charlie!

(2) I recently put together an estimate of the House playing field based upon challenger financing and party activity. Going into yesterday, I was using this as my "crib" sheet. However, and much to my chagrin, the list was not complete. It missed several seats that switched last night - IA 02, KS 02, MN 01, NH 02, NY 19, NC 08 (almost!), and PA 04. The divergence between the range in my final estimate and the actual result is entirely explicable by the seats my list missed. Where did I go wrong?

I did not include a measure for incumbent financing/activity. If I had, I think I would have picked up on many of these races. The GOP seems to me to have lost all of these because the Republican incumbents were not as active/effective as they could have been. They did not accurately assess the threat that they faced and/or did not take enough steps to mitigate the threat. Others, like Jim Gerlach, Chris Shays and Heather Wilson did - and they survived. Theoretically, the mistake I made here was to presume that the incumbency advantage that obviously exists (this year's incumbency reelection rate is still about 95.2%) is automatic. Incumbents are in a good position to insulate themselves. But they are not automatically insulated. They must actually do the insulating.

From my scan of the seats that flipped, I think that this election supports the theory of Gary Jacobson and Samuel Kernell, which I have discussed at many points in time during the campaign season. Our House elections are not referenda strictly speaking. They are qualified referenda - the qualifications are (a) good recruitment, (b) good fundraising and (c) good campaigns. If they were true referenda, the GOP would have lost many more seats than they actually did. Fortunately for them, most voters did not get a true choice last night because their Democratic challengers were under-funded and under-qualified relative to their incumbents. The incumbents who lost were the incumbents who either faced strong challenges or who themselves ran very weak campaigns.

Indeed, by my count -- there were only 3 Republican incumbents who ran essentially flawless campaigns and nevertheless lost: Nancy Johnson, Mike Sodrel, and Clay Shaw. Mike Fitzpatrick and Rob Simmons both appear headed for losses, so I would add them to the list. The rest of the Democratic pickups, 83.33% in all, were pickups in either (a) open seats, (b) seats held by scandal-ridden incumbents or (c) seats held by ineffective campaigners.

Thus, Republican mistakes, specifically campaign-related mistakes, very clearly were a major factor in the loss of the House. However, my feeling is that the mistakes that were made were the kind of mistakes that are inevitably made in our type of politics. The political parties really have much less power than people think. So, when people blast Tom Reynolds for not forcing Don Sherwood to step down -- my response is, what could Reynolds possibly have done? All you could ultimately do is appeal to Sherwood to bail. You cannot force the guy out -- which is to say, it would not be rational to force an expensive, highly-publicized and risky primary battle in PA 10, which is the only way you could actually force him out. Ditto with Republican incumbents like Leach, Hostettler and Bass. None of them raised nearly enough money to survive this kind of environment. But what was Reynolds to do? Force them to go to fundraisers? These guys are really only responsible to and for themselves. They are not children. Candidates are largely independent of parties today. At the end of the day, the only way Reynolds could get them to "behave" would be to threaten them with strong primary challengers, which would be a non-credible threat.

I think the reason that the GOP lost so many seats that they "should not" have lost is that many of these incumbents have not faced real challenges since they were elected. Some of them have never faced real challenges. Accordingly, they just were not ready.

Melissa Hart, for instance, was first elected with 59% of the vote. I think that she thought she could not lose. The internal returns support this. She let Altmire get in the game because she thought she would carry Allegheny County and Butler County strongly enough to see her through. After all, that has been the key to her success -- the north Pittsburgh, anti-tax suburbs have always been with her, and have offered enough support to hold the line against the more Democratic strongholds of Beaver and Mercer Counties. But Allegheny County only gave her 52% of the vote. Why? Two reasons. (1) The north Pittsburgh suburbs are, like the rest of us, angry and frustrated over Iraq, and taxes were a non-issue this year. So, they abandoned her. (2) She allowed them to abandon her. Her resources gave her control over information and saliency in the district, and she failed to make effective use of them. She lost to a guy who probably ended up raising less than $1 million. If she had been in front of the campaign -- like Gerlach and Shays were -- talking up the issues where she was a good fit with the district, talking up how Altmire was a poor fit with the district on those issues, before Altmire had said word one, she could have defined the contest and she would have won. But she did not. She held back. She let the national environment define it for her. Steeler fans in the North Hills were talking Iraq and not taxes on their way to the ballot box because she failed to change the subject. She probably could have. Not necessarily, but probably. Peter Roskam, in IL 06, a district that has much in common with PA 04, held that seat for the GOP. Why did Hart lose and Roskam win? Roskam ran a much better campaign and managed to define the contest in a way that inclined the district toward him. Hart rested on her oars and let Iraq sweep Altmire to victory.

Call it evolutionary electoral politics. The strong survive when conditions turn against them. The weak do not. Last night, almost all of GOP losses were their weak seats.

Al From, head of the DLC, just issued a statement on the election results which reads in part:

Yesterday's results indicate a broad and deep Democratic win, from the takeover of the House and strong Senate gains, to a significant shift in governorships and state legislatures. They also obviously represent a striking repudiation of a Bush administration and Republican Party that has so often subordinated problem solving to power seeking, competence to ideology, honesty and integrity to corruption and cronyism, and the politics of national unity to the politics of polarization. The administration's failed Iraq policies became central to the election in no small part because they illustrated all these Republican failures. [snip]

The big political test will come almost immediately, in the ability of Democrats to offer a compelling progressive agenda for the country, and in a 2008 presidential contest that will be about the future more than the past. If Democrats act as problem solvers, not polarizers, that future will be very bright.

That last point was underscored by Joe Lieberman's re-election victory in Connecticut, which helps solidify the Democratic Party's credentials as a broad, inclusive coalition able to compete for the vital center of American politics.

Question for From: if the vote yesterday was a "striking repudiation" of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq, how can Joe Lieberman's re-election in Connecticut be characterized as a positive development for the Democratic Party?

Question: If President Bush had done this two, three, four months ago would yesterday have been different?