Random notes on the recent rapture

In the blizzard of words and articles following Tuesday’s election in the US (and today’s confirmation that both houses were, indeed, sacked by the Dems) and the cheery-on-top resignation of Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday, there probably isn’t much to add at this point. Like Jonn, I didn't think they could do it.

A few quick, random notes:

• The news that Dick Cheney was against shoving Rummy out of the lifeboat served only to endear the VP to the conservatives, at the expense of his boss who they had already disliked for a good 12 hours or so. It didn’t help Bush with the right flank that he had the incoming Majority Speaker Nancy Pelosi over to the White House for lunch the same day.
  
• As one AR commenter asked the other day, what are the Dems really going to do now that they have both houses of Congress? Will they, as the GOP faithful have been screaming for months, use their subpoena to drag people up to Capital Hill? Will they try to impeach President Bush? Are they going to create a solid base for 2008?
  
• God knows what they’ll do, but there’ll certainly be more investigations than we’ve seen as of late. The whole sordid tale of the outgoing Congress can be read here, every insult nicely cataloged by Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi. It’s blood-boiling stuff.
  
• Perhaps the more interesting story from Tuesday is this: The Dems did pretty well at the state-level, picking up six governorships and nine legislatures. It’s the sort of help that could turn an Ohio—which jumped into the arms of the Democratic Party this week—in a tight election. As the pundits have pointed out all week, it might have made a difference in the 2004 presidential race.
  
• Why is Bush dusting off the Spring-2001, uniter-not-a-divider shtick? Because all those Dems forgot about the last six years, right?
  
• Right-wing blog Red State came out with a piece today declaring that it’s going to “fight on.” Not sure who asked, but, like a lot of the response from the right-wing blogs and pundits—which, for the most part, just congratulated one another on not complaining about voter fraud like those pesky, uppity Democrats—it seemed like a pretty defensive pose. Particularly coming from a site that, for months leading up to the election, was mind-numbingly smug.