Election Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers of the Election:

WINNER: The Democratic Party - It shored up its base and expanded to places where Republicans were once gaining ground. Latinos broke for Obama, and younger people. It had the reverse Bradley effect. Despite presiding over the least popular Congress in history, the Dems made big gains in the House and Senate.

LOSER: The Republican Party - John McCain's never been the darling of the base, but his failed campaign left the party in shambles. Sometimes you need to be reduced to ashes to rise like a phoenix, but now is the time for the GOP to look for its heart and soul. They'll barely be able to filibuster, so they'll need to choose their battles wisely. They also lost ground on two of their normally strongest issues - the economy and national security. How can they argue Democrats will make us more socialist when they helped pass the $700 billion bailout?

WINNER: David Axelrod & Robert Gibbs - They showed that positive campaigning works. The Obama Team stayed positive when Hillary was beating them, and they could stay above the fray when the surrogates did the attacking. Look at the pleasant smile on Gibbs's face when he says he wouldn't accuse Sean Hannity of anti-Semitism for having an anti-Semite on his show. Now Axelrod is a White House Advisor and Gibbs is the press secretary.

LOSER: Steve Schmidt & Rick Davis - They looked smart the day after the GOP convention wrapped, but then it all fell apart. They had a different message every few days, and they never seemed to realize when certain mud didn't stick. They used Palin as an attack dog, which drove up her negatives, and they didn't let any of her Alaska people help with the campaign. Now they have a bunch of anonymous workers joining in the circular firing squad. (Until the worker is man enough to name himself, I find it impossible to believe Palin didn't know Africa was a continent and not one big country.)

WINNER: Old-school conservatives - This battle hasn't been fought yet, but writers like Chris Buckley, Peggy Noonan, George Will, David Brooks, etc., seemed to realize the only way to save the Republican party from itself was to reject its current trajectory. This means more goodwill built up for governors like Bobby Jindal and Charlie Crist, and it means Newt Gingrich will bend a few more ears with his think-tank.

LOSER: Populist conservatives - Sarah Palin needs to decide which camp she wants to belong to. She went the populist route and it cost her. She needs to finish her term as governor and do some studying. Meanwhile I don't think the Mike Huckabee/Gary Bauer type is going to fly in 2012. I'd put the hawkish neocons in this camp too.

WINNER: CNN. The Pew Research group found CNN to be the most balanced of all the news in this election cycle.

LOSER: MSNBC. The Pew Research Group found them to be the least balanced, and they're still last in cable ratings, though Rachel Maddow gets a shout-out for sometimes beating Larry King now. NBC itself showed to be pretty fair, and guys like Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams have expressed displeasure at their cable wing aiming to just be a liberal Fox News.

WINNER: Franklin D. Roosevelt. If Obama implements half of what he promised, America is going to get a New New Deal.

LOSER: George W. Bush. He got us into two wars, and intelligence eventually revealed one was unjustified. Even if it had been, his administration blew the post-war occupation. Meanwhile he presided over major increases in spending, a ballooning deficit, a further out-of-balance budget, the nationalization of banks, and an annihilation of the Republican majority in both houses. And Osama bin Laden is still free.

WINNER: Howard Dean. His plan in 2005 to go to all 50 states is paying fruit. GOP mainstays like Virginia and Indiana went blue, and the NY Times election map shows that 90% of the counties in the US were bluer now than they were in 2004. And he's quitting while he's ahead.

LOSER: Karl Rove. His plan of keeping the base energized and ignoring everybody else collapsed when Bush gave them nothing to be energized about from the 2005 State of the Union address onward.

WINNER: Harry Reid. He has the power now. Will he use it wisely?

LOSER: Joe Lieberman. When the Senate was 51-49 they needed him. Now that it's more like 57-43, sayonara, Joe, from any important position.

GOP Speeches so far

These are the ones I saw.

Fred Thompson - He did a vivid narrative of John McCain's service, and if he'd shown that type of passion when he ran for president, he might've done better.

Joe Lieberman - It was weird seeing him there. And the crowd seemed unsure how to react at times. He was Genial Joe, incapable of pulling a fire-and-brimstone Zell Miller speech, but with his smile, he conveyed quite nicely that party differences aside, Barack's just not ready to be president. He also got the crowd to cheer for Bill Clinton, when he pointed out Clinton was able to cross party lines to pass things like welfare reform and a balanced budget, and Barack has no examples of doing anything similar.

Mitt Romney - His speech played to the hall, and in a way, it also illustrated why he lost the nomination. His rhetoric was over the top and in ways, fear-mongering. I think he's better in a job than campaigning for one. He really turned the Olympics around. Maybe he can move to Michigan and run for governor there, or fill a cabinet post.

Mike Huckabee - Huck has an easy time speaking to a crowd and he hit some good populist points. It's difficult to gage his sincerity. He reminds me of the old saying, "Once you can fake sincerity, you've got it made." I think even if McCain loses, neither Mitt nor Huck will not be the nominee in 2012. Huck's going to be a Fox News talking-head.

Rudy Giuliani - His strong points were on McCain the man. I thought he got a little lost in the weeds with the Islamic terrorism thing. He also got out some good points about Sarah Palin; pointing out her 80% approval rating makes her "most popular governor in America."

Sarah Palin - Speech of the week so far. For example, for the Democrats, I thought Bill & Hillary's speeches dwarfed Joe Biden's. Not the case here. The hall was rooting for her. After seeing how the press brutalized her and her family the past five days, it was nice to see her respond, and she did it with a smile, with grace and dignity, and she also served well the usual role of a VP nominee: attack dog. She wasn't mean about it; she just got in her jabs, illustrating how she has more experience than "our opponent", let alone John McCain. The line that leapt out to my wife was "For you parents of children with special needs, you will have a friend and an advocate in the White House."

Even if they lose, she can go back to being governor, and she'd be the front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2012.