Election Post-Mortem

Back Where We Started From:  "The consensus appears to be that last night's Dem losses of roughly 60 House seats effectively wiped away the geographic and demographic gains Dems made in their 2006 and 2008 wave elections."
The West is the Best.  Potential Democratic sweep in California:  Brown over Ms. $140 Million, Boxer, Newsom. Kamala Harris is barely holding on to her lead for AG with 99.2% of precincts reporting.
Whitewash:  With all three African American Senate candidates losing and the only current black Senator (Roland Burris of Illinios) retiring, there will be no African Americans in the new Senate.
Weak Tea:  There is no doubt that the Tea Party was an energizing force that helped Republican candidates throughout the country.  But it also appears that it may have cost the Republicans a 50-50 split in the Senate, where they lost 3 seats that more conventional Republicans probably could have won, in Delaware, Colorado, and Nevada.
Woof Woof.  As Daily Kos reports, half of the Blue Dogs are out.  23 lost, while 4 others chose not to run, and 2 made unsuccessful runs for the Senate. These 29 Blue Dogs were replaced by Republicans while 25 held their seats, but their reduced numbers will reduce their clout.  By contrast, the 79-member Progressive Caucus lost only 4, and so, "the partisan divide likely will be sharper than in the current House and Speaker John Boehner will find fewer allies across the aisle willing to give cover to Republican initiatives."
Health Care Fallout: Most of the Democrats who opposed health care lost anyway.  Of the 39 Democrats who voted against health care reform, 20 lost their re-election bids, 12 won, 6 didn't seek re-election and one switched parties and still lost.
Immigrant-Bashing Doesn't Really Work:  Adam Serwer notes that Tom Tancredo in Colorado, Meg Whitman in California and Sharron Angle in Nevada "all went down in defeat after running campaigns that promised to crack down on immigration."
And So It Begins:  The GOP Plan To Investigate Obama.
Words of Hope.  From Digby: "As you go about your business today, feeling like hell, keep in mind that it was just two years ago that many of the same pundits and gasbags were assuring us all that the conservative movement was dead. . . . If we play our cards right, and the Democrats don't completely implode, it's probable that at the end of the day we . . . will look back and see that human rights, economic justice and peace came out the winners more often than not."