Glorious, Kind Of

All right. I get five hours of sleep, the final hour spent sleepily asking Helmette as she hustles around the house whether Tester won in Montana. NPR is going on and on about Schwarzenegger winning. Ugh. "I love sequels...." Ugh. "I have two biceps...." "I pronounce 'w's as 'v's." Ugh.

This morning, things look about the same as they did at 2:30. Russ (by email), however, points out a nice little upset victory in California's 11th. Jerry McNerney defeated Richard Pombo. McNerney is a wind energy engineer. Pombo was the seven-term incumbent and anti-environment chair of the House Resources Committee. Pombo had proposed selling off large tracts of public land (with a preference for those sales going to mining firms), weakening the Endangered Species Act, opening up ANWR for drilling, and had accepted large sums from the oil industry. He was considered one of the most corrupt members of Congress. Adeus, Pombo. Thank you, California's 11th.

Thus far, Democrats have picked up 28 seats in the House. That's about in line with most predictions I had heard around DC. The reasonably optimistic versions ran around the 30-pickup range. This is heartening - not only that the House is now Democratic, but that Dems accurately predicted something.

For the Senate, it still looks likely that Jon Tester (D) does indeed have Montana. But this race narrowed over the past several hours. As of right now, Tester has a 1% lead (roughly 1800 votes) with tabulation problems reported in Yellowstone County, which leans Republican. Oh, wait, CNN has Yellowstone at 100% reporting now - it's not clear to me, however, if this is the final re-tabulation. It now looks like Meagher County is what we're waiting on. All other counties are reporting 100%. Meagher reports 0%.

Virginia is messy, however. Jim Webb should have this victory over the execrable George Allen, given that the remaining votes to be counted should break either pro-Webb or even. But it's looking like a recount is in the cards since the difference must be greater than .5% and it's right now around .3%. The problem is that recounts in VA don't take place until after the original vote is "certified." Certification takes place by Nov. 27th. This means that it could be nearly a month before we know who has won VA. We probably wouldn't have had to go through this if the Republicans hadn't engaged in intimidation tactics in VA. And I wouldn't be surprised to see more VA shenanigans over the next month.

What's the overall message? I think we know that, apart from local head-to-head issues (which can't be neatly summarized - except perhaps minimum wage concerns), this tide-turn is a rejection of the policies of Bush and his Republican-bots. Although this is all a huge nation-wide victory for the Democrats, they have a lot of work to do to convince US voters that their victories are warranted apart from the urge to, as one VA voter put it, "neuter Bush."

Below, I had agreed with Peter Levine that the Dems now need to advance solid progressive reforms and build themselves into a party with a solid identity and into a party doing good, smart work for the nation and the world. I obviously agree. We shouldn't get carried away with our political anger, despite the utter disasters left in the wake of this presidency and the now-defunct Republican Congress. The cold fact remains that things need to be fixed, and the Dems need to show they're the party that can do the fixing.

But I still think there has to be accountability for the corruption and other misdeeds of the previous Congress and the administration. This doesn't have to entail a series of endless, heavily politicized investigations à la the Clinton-Starr saga. We should not be like Republicans of the sort ready to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on gaining political points. A key difference must be kept in mind: what ought to be pursued are not investigations based on moral or political offenses, but on criminal offenses. And where criminality is legally ambiguous, there ought to be reforms. This, I believe, is good for the country. New House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says this will be the least corrupt Congress in the history of the country, and that "we will show that this is not about getting even -- this is about getting ahead''. Let's hold her to that, first. And I think we can - the more I've heard Pelosi speak about the future recently, the more I've come to really like her. But let's also make sure that this means that those who are corrupt face the penalties.

That is a matter of accountability, as well as a matter of "getting ahead" beyond any of these immediate gains.