RE: Humbling GOP Defeats Don't Bode Well for Midterm Races

I believe Brownstein and other pundits need to look at the political histories of these off-off year elections.

With President Bush facing his lowest job approval ratings and polls showing widespread dissatisfaction over the country's direction, the GOP suffered a series of bruising blows — from decisive losses in the New Jersey and Virginia governor's races to the clean-sweep rejection of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ballot initiatives...

Did anybody really think a Republican was going to win in New Jersey??? If you look at the numbers, Gov.-elect Corzine got a smaller percentage of the vote in victory this year than the previous NJ gov. got in the election in '01, and that was when Bush's poll numbers were high due to 9/11. In Virginia, the Democrats were saying that they not only expected to win the Governor's race, but the other two statewide races: Lt. Governor and Attorney General, and to take over control of the State House of Delegates. Gov.-elect Kaine won by the same margin (percentage wise) that Mark Warner won by in '01. And not only did the Republicans take back the Lt. Governor's seat, they won the Attorney General's race and they remained in control of the House of Delegates (the Democrats only netted 1 seat.) In California, the voters chose to go with the status quo, as the voters did in Ohio, when liberal Democrats were pushing for election reforms (they failed too.) For some reason, the media chooses to ignore the results in Ohio...

I believe it was a staus-quo election... I don't see anything earth shattering that happened on Tuesday night.

and even the resounding defeat of Randy Kelly, a Democratic mayor in St. Paul, Minn., who was hurt politically because he campaigned last year for the president.

This guy's opponent was a liberal Democrat, and St. Paul is a liberal city... If you're a Democrat, who would you vote for: The Democrat who supported Kerry, or the Democrat who supported Bush. I don't know why some pundits consider the outcome of this race as a surprise.