Electoral calamity forces Bush to play defense

Lieberman crushes Lamont
Yet Sen. Joe Lieberman, who lost the Democratic primary in August to neophyte Ned Lamont, proved the anomaly in this year of anti-Iraq war voting.

Lieberman declared in June, “The consequences of an American retreat and defeat (in Iraq) would be terrible for the safety and security of the American people.”

Despite this, or because of it, voters stood by Lieberman and rejected Lamont.

The extent of the Democratic victory on Tuesday night raises the question of whether the Bush era is now over.

Even though Bush will serve until January 2009, many Democrats saw the 2006 election as their chance finally to punish the president.

On election eve, one Democratic Senate campaign worker said he looked forward to Bush being charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. “He won’t be able to leave the United States,” he said with relish.

Decision 2006 multimedia Getty Images   Slide show: Election Voters head to the polls in elections that could shift control of Congress and the Senate.

Some Democrats see a decisive turning of the tide on social issues: On Saturday afternoon, foreseeing a Democratic House majority, Democratic House candidate Lois Murphy asked a rally in Norristown, Pa., “Are you ready for a Congress that protects and respects a woman’s right to choose?”

Murphy apparently lost Tuesday, defeated by Rep. Jim Gerlach.

What's on the abortion rights agenda?
It will be interesting to see whether new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offers any abortion-rights legislation and how she knits together the pro-abortion rights members with the newly elected Democratic House anti-abortion members such as Brad Ellsworth of Indiana and Heath Shuler of North Carolina. 

One glaring pattern in Tuesday’s outcome was increased regional polarization: Tuesday was a disaster for eco-friendly, socially libertarian Republicans from the Northeast.

For example, in New Hampshire, Republican Rep. Charlie Bass, who split from most Republicans by voting against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, lost to Democrat Paul Hodes.

The Democrat defeated Bass by running against Bush: “We’re going to ask New Hampshire voters a pretty basic question: Have you had enough of an imperial president and an ineffective, rubber-stamp Congress who just won’t face the real issues that are facing this country?”

But Republican centrists ran into trouble elsewhere as well. In Iowa, Rep. Jim Leach, seeking to return to Congress for a 16th term, fell to Democrat David Loebsack in a tight race.

The Republicans met with trouble in the fast-growing regions of exurbia where Bush had done well in 2004. For example, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a quintessential exurban place, Bush got 52 percent of the vote in 2004, but Santorum was able to muster only 44 percent on Tuesday.

In another model exurban county, Anoka County, Minnesota, Bush won 53 percent in 2004, but GOP Senate candidate Mark Kennedy got a meager 41 percent Tuesday.

A problem for Democrats in 2008: keeping Republican-leaning seats soon to be held by newly elected Democrats.

In Pennsylvania’s 10^th congressional district, Democrat Chris Carney defeated scandal-tarred Rep. Don Sherwood who paid his ex-mistress $500,000 in an apparent bid to keep her quiet until after Election Day.

But Bush carried this district with 60 percent in 2004, 13 points better than Sherwood did on Tuesday. It’s hard to imagine that the district has undergone such a radical and permanent personality change.

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