And some more good results - (2)

Seth heads west a few thousand miles...

Anyone who has not spent the last 18 hours down a big hole (but if you have, I hope it was fun down there) will know by know that in the US, the Democrats have taken the House of Representatives and quite possibly the Senate as well. And Donald Rumsfeld is going to have a lot more time to compose existentialist poetry now, as he's been fired.

It's all great news and I was quietly hopeful that the very strong polling data for the Democrats would be borne out by the result, which seems to have pretty much happened. I was a bit worried by the narrowing of the poll lead a few days ago, which had echos of Labour 1992 about it, but the combination of Iraq and various Republican scandals too numerous to list here seems to have done the trick.

In the giroscope office, Hal Berstram was chomping at the bit to be allowed to make an online prediction on the blog - he has fond memories of his psephological analysis in the 2005 general election campaign, which sounded very convicing - but unfortunately he was out by 12 seats as he overestimated the strength of the Tory vote (perhaps surprisingly). Barney and I had to remind Hal that on doctor's orders he is debarred from political commentary for the foreseeable future and thus limited to the sports desk plus a carefully monitored level of religious speculation. As some consolation I have agreed that he can double as "science officer" and bought him a Scientific American subscription. Hal was most pleased, as you can see below...



Many commentators will point out, rightly, that these results are only the beginnings of a resurgence in the Democrats' fortunes in US politics. And there is much that could go wrong for them between now and the 2008 Presidential Election. For example, they still don't really have a strong alternative position on foreign policy beyond simply pulling out of Iraq as quickly as possible. They may become preoccupied with a congressional assault on George Bush, possibly even attempting to impeach him, when it would be much better to pretty much ignore him as he's a total lame duck anyway. Even if the Democratic Congress makes all the right moves, their candidate could still be crap (this is what happened to the Republicans in 1996 with Dole, for example). But even given all the notes of caution that will be sounding, this is still a good day for America. Imagine how much worse it would have been if the Republicans hadn't lost control, even after all the shit that has gone down... it's a creaky, weird and bought-and-sold kind of democracy they have over there (just as ours is here), but it's not completely dysfunctional. "Thank God", as they would say.