A week and a half ago, my son arrived early. He’ll be able to vote on Nov. 5th, 2024, a presidential election, instead of having to wait until Nov. 4th, 2025. When he votes for the first time, I wonder what will shape his beliefs, as I reflect a bit on what has shaped mine and how I view yesterday’s election results.

In case you’re reading this years in the future, or from somewhere else in the world where US midterm elections aren’t that interesting, the Democrats have retaken the House and barring weirdness in two recounts have retaken the Senate, effectively ending the Bush agenda for the last two years of his presidency. More importantly, again barring recount weirdness in two races in Georgia, the Republicans did not have a single pickup in a major (House / Senate / Governor). Republicans lost across the board and all across the country, and in districts that are typically heavily Republican. In effect, it feels that the Republican Revolution of 1994 has been effectively reversed.

Now, I doubt that’s the case.. it’s not clear people want to go back to 1992, but clearly what we have had lately isn’t what people want either. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next 18 years…

Here’s my 2-year prediction.

After a chummy two months of, “Sure, we can work together!” by both sides, the 110th Congress is sworn in. George Bush never sees another bill he likes, and his lame duckery begins in earnest. Democrats celebrate the halting of the Bush agenda, Bush vetoes lots of bills and starts claiming that he and the rest of the Republicans are halting the big government liberals. Iraq continues to be a mess, although there are now hearings and oversight on the prisoners / enemy combatants as well as profiteering (sell your Haliburton stock now!). But ultimately, we’re still stuck in Iraq in 2 years, and the Dems take the White House in 2008.