The Day After...

[vakkotaur]

...but the divers report
too much baggage to port
caused the wreck of the Walter Fritz Mondale.

-- Wreck of the Walter Fritz Mondale by The Capitol Steps

I went to bed last night expecting that Mondale would edge ahead of Coleman in the count as I slept. That did not happen. Not only that, but the count shows that absentee ballot issues would not have changed the result.

Pawlenty (R) won the Gov. race by a good amount. A couple weeks ago it was almost a three way tie in the polls. While the IP candidate started out sounding good, toward the end he sounded not like a Ventura Independent who'd speak his mind, tell reporters that he meant what he said and that was that, and understood where he stood should be thought out or he should not claim to stand there. Instead he came off as a DFLer trying to get elected in a disguise. It didn't work.

Also, DFLer Bill Luther lost to John Kline (R). The interesting thing here is that Luther even alienated some of his own by setting up a shill to run as right wing alternative to try to siphon votes from Kline. There's a term used here, probably invented by a tourism board, "Minnesota Nice." There is a actually a lot of buy-in to this term and what it stands for. This shilling was going too far. Luther paid for it.

Perhaps the most amusing thing, even beyond the Green senate candidate getting fewer votes than Wellstone, was that Voter News Service didn't do exit poll projections and 'The Media' had to do something unusual and deal with real votes being counted. This was good. Also amusing is how they were careful to avoid making the same mistake as in 2000 with premature conclusions. This, of course, was a bit easier with VNS acting responsibly this time around. Hopefully this trend will continue. (I can dream, can't I?)

I see a few folks are proclaiming doom about having the Senate and the House both with Republican majorities with a Republican in the White House. This happened before, and despite all the doomsayers, the world did not end. I'm looking forward to a brighter future, myself. Not a perfect one, but certainly a better one.