Senate Update

The key stake in this election was a 60-seat Democrat majority in the Senate.  That will not happen now.  A run-off in Georgia has seen Rep Saxby Chambliss beat Dem Jim Martin by 16 points, and Minnesota Rep Norm Coleman remains slightly ahead of Dem Al Franken with 93% of a recount completed.  Assuming those two hold up, that would give the Dems 58 seats.

With a 60-vote majority, the Dems could push through (or prevent) just about anything they wanted, especially with Obama in the White House.

Of course, with a handful of RINOs still infesting the GOP, I would suggest it's really not going to matter if there are 58 or 60 Dems.  I suppose it's possible that the GOP could rally the likes of Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to their side on a few key issues, but I'd be surprised if that became a regular occurrence.

Hot Air has some interesting analysis of Chambliss' overwhelming victory in Georgia:

Republicans around the nation breathed a sigh of relief at Saxby Chambliss' re-election yesterday, but no one could have predicted its scope.  Chambliss barely missed winning a majority four weeks earlier, but Jim Martin came within three points of Chambliss in the general election, and most observers figured on a relatively close race.  Instead, Chambliss won by a whopping 16 points...

Democrats had a motivating factor in marginalizing Republicans for the next two years, and that didn't seem to get them to the polls.  The general election did, and the only difference was that Obama was on the ticket.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi should take note: their modest gains in 2008 didn't come as an endorsement of their previous two years of leadership in Congress.  If they think they can move even farther to the Left and survive the next midterms, they're fooling themselves.

Gary Gross notes the other significant impact Chambliss' victory will have.  Now that the 60-seat majority is officially dead, the Al Franken/Norm Coleman race in Minnesota suddenly loses a lot of its attraction for Harry Reid.  If Reid had a shot at 60, he might have interceded on Franken's behalf by invoking the Senate's authority to decide the election.  Without that motivation, Reid will almost certainly avoid such heavy-handed tactics, especially since Republicans could now bring the Senate to a standstill over it.

We'll see all of this play out in the next few weeks.  While there are some indications of moving to the center on the part of Obama, there have been no such indications from Reid and Pelosi.  I wouldn't be surprised if they drove the very Left-leaning agenda while he spoke pretty words of centrism.  That's how Obama won the White House -- saying one thing and having his minions do another -- so there's no reason to stop now.  Given the historical nature of a first mid-term election (which usually favors the minority party), and that those of us on the Right are expecting a serious overreach of power by the Obama-Reid-Pelosi trifecta, the rationale from Hot Air only adds to the hope for 2010.  Still, we need to clarify our message and get it out - it'll be an uphill battle for the next two years, but one that must be won.

In the meantime, watch out - your freedoms are likely to be restricted, and your pocketbook is almost certain to get significantly lighter.

There's my two cents.


Sources:
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/03/what-does-the-chambliss-blowout-victory-mean/
http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2008/12/03/the-dream-of-60-dies/