No, the historical trend is the party that won the presidential election looses congressional seats at the mid-term. And that’s exactly what happened. I our case, the winner of the election (as measured by votes cast) is not the current president.
To understand why, you need to look at why there is typically a loss in the midterm, and the reason is coattails. Which is the effect whereby peopole who go to the polls intending to vote for a particular party, also end up voting for other members of his party who they don’t really know. This tends to sweep in weak candidats who then loose the next election.
But coattails don’t pay any attention to the electoral college, they are based strictly on the total votes cast. And since Gore won the popular vote, he could be expected to have more coattails then Bush (neither would have much).
So we’ve gone from “the Jesus Right will turn on the Republicans like mad wolverines” to “happens all the time with no consequence” in a couple of posts.
Dig it. The Republicans won. That’s as “unalloyed” as it gets in American politics.
Al Gore’s fantasies of what might have been are hardly historical fact. The problem is that the Dems have the “too dumb to punch a hole in a piece of paper” vote sewed up, and it did them no more good in 2000 as it did on Tuesday.
Every time I sign on here, I get reassured. Liberals have no clue on why they lost.
the election was an unalloyed disaster because those two senate votes add up to control of the committees- -ie, no inconvenient subpoenas issuing to uncover the actual dimensions of the intelligence fiasco, the harken fiasco {see thread, this board) and, most of all, no tough questions for judicial appointees–who, as we now know, are in line to become the REAL electoral college.