Election postmortem

It's been widely reported that the two most salient issues for voters who went Democratic were the war and Congressional corruption. Generally this favored Democrats who were against the war and hurt Republicans who were perceived as corrupt.

But what if you had a corrupt Democrat -- but one who was also against the war?

Republicans conducted a poll to use against Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat, who was battered by accusations of corruption and who was running against Thomas Kean Jr., an initial supporter of the war. Respondents were given a choice between a candidate with a history of corruption, facing possible indictment, versus a candidate who supported the war. Each received 40 percent, a sobering finding for Republicans.

P.S. Menendez beat Kean.

As for the so-called genius of Karl Rove, I think we can all agree that the guy has always been a masterful poker player -- no one could bluff like that pudgy Texan. But in order to bluff effectively, you have to have decent cards once in a while. This year, it was not to be:

Until the end, keeping in character and hewing to longstanding political strategy, Mr. Rove presented an optimistic front, telling anyone who would listen that the party would hold control of the House and the Senate. Now, his aides say they knew a month ago how much trouble they were in, at least in the House. Three weeks before the election, various efforts to crunch polling data and find a path toward success kept coming to the same best case result: the Democrats would take 17 seats.

Sara Taylor, the White House political director, said that she had still seen a way to win before Election Day but that it would have required holding an "inside straight."

But those kinds of cards were not in the deck for Rove, not this time, and so Turdblossom finally went down to defeat.

And Rahm Emmanuel? Elsewhere, I opined that Howard Dean was not getting enough credit for the Dems' victory. But Emmanuel was superior to Dean in a couple of respects: he was a a brutal competitor and a brilliant tactician -- easily Rove's match during this cycle. While it was Dean who led the way (early on) against the war, who pioneered the use of the Internet in fund-raising/community-building and who relentlessly promoted the (winning) strategy of a 50-state campaign, it was Emmanuel (and Schumer) who got into the trenches and fought with guns and knives to get their candidates elected. I want all of them on my team.

Gathered in the Oval Office with aides at dawn yesterday, Mr. Bush decided to add a name to his call list. “I’m going to call Rahm, the guy did a good job,” Mr. Bush said, according to an aide.