Pudding Cups Among The Ruins

Why not start with some of Double-H's patented substantive gloating?:

The bottom line: The GOP won enormous victories in the House, the Senate and statehouses across the land, and lost at most three or four House seats and one governor's mansion.  The government-employee dominated redoubts of California, New York, and Maryland provided some small relief for the Democrats, but when the story of redistricting plays out the results will grow even more grim for the president's party.  Indeed, if the GOP claims either of the Colorado legislative chambers, the Republicans will be nearly gerrymander-proof because of the triumph of the redistricting initiative in California.  By contrast, Democrats are looking at a redistricting nightmare in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Arizona and elsewhere.  Which means you just have to chuckle at CNN's headline spin from earlier this evening declaring the results a "Split Decision."  Yes, Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer survived, but not one GOP Senate seat was lost, and the Obama agenda is repudiated and the battle over Obamacare, the tax cuts and the deficit has moved decisively in favor of conservatives while the 2012 map has been changed greatly to the president's detriment.

The emphasized passages are the big picture takeaways.  680 state legislative seats the GOP gained last night, the biggest such wave at that level EVER, even more than the 628 the Dems flipped in the post-Watergate 1974 midterms.  The entire Midwest other than Illinois turned cherry-"red," including Michigan and Pennsylvania, which elected Republican governors.  Texas and Florida got redder.  This is a stunning indication of the depth of the Death Wave, that it didn't just leap nimbly from tree top to tree top, but plunged and brutally winnowed all the way down to the roots.  It's having the last laugh on the Census, really, as the GOP can not only redistrict/gerrymander itself into an even bigger long-term majority (provided they govern so as to keep it) but make the terrain on which Red Barry will wage his re-election fight exceedingly untenable.

But in this day and age, when you've scored the winning touchdown, you just can't do those Mark Gastineau sack dances and Fun Bunch end zone celebrations anymore.  Gloating is for us grassrootsers, not the pols, and Speaker-designate John Boehner prudently understands this.  No Gingrich personality cult revival cometh from he:

But it isn't all just learning from the Godawful hubris of the other side over the past two years.  The economy is still in the waste extractor.  There's a crapload of work to do fixing the enormous damage inflicted on the country by this Regime, and it's Potentate will fight against it every step of the way.  And the triumph does have a kind of "so what" undertone to it; "Great, we're on our way to another decade of dominance in D.C., but ObamaCare got through - how the hell do we get rid of it before it's already fully implemented?"  I think of Boehner's horrified floor speech on Final Sunday when I look at this clip.  He understands Winston Churchill's comment after the Second Battle of El Alamien:

This is not the end; it is not even the beginning of the end; but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Sometimes the AmSpecers provide themselves their own answers.

Because it just HAS to happen somewhere in EVERY election cycle:

[Alaska election officials] would like to get the count started “earlier rather than later” and could possibly begin counting as soon as next week — instead of the
initially reported date of November 18.

The count will take place in Juneau. They have 81,876 write-in ballots that must be counted by hand so far and still have a few precincts that have yet to report…

Once the results are certified (this date is also pending) a candidate has five days to request a recount. From that initial certification date, a candidate also has a total of ten days to contest the results.

Then again, given the nature of this particular election, wasn't this outcome ALWAYS going to be the case if "Write-in" came out on top?  Plus, it affords Joe Miller at least a potential mitigating factor in his favor:

Robert Campbell, Mr. Miller’s campaign manager, cautioned that Mrs. Murkowski can’t count on every write-in vote.

“I’m sure there’s probably going to be two or three dozen votes for Spiderman,” he said.

Lieutenant Governor Craig Campbell said Wednesday write-in votes for Mr. Miller won’t count because Mr. Miller’s name isn’t on the official list of write-in candidates.

Dude, come on.  Would being both on the official ballot AND the write-in list have even been legal?  And would GI Joe not be insane to litigate that on "voter intent" grounds, vagaries of election law be damned?  Hey, that's the way the game is now played.  And if it led to a "Category Five political and legal hurricane," I don't think it'd be "awful"; rather, it would be precisely the outcome that Luella Madcowsky made inevitable with her insufferable bitchquest.  After the bug-eyed crackwhore's reneging refusal to abide by the GOP primary election result, Joe Miller is hardly obligated to gracefully relinquish her ill-gotten prize to her.  Scorched earth, baby, scorched earth.

My caveat is that a fourteen thousand vote margin seems awfully difficult to overcome via those means.  And we know who controls the Alaska election apparatus, now don't we?

Here comes the whipped cream, rainbow sprinkles, and the cherry:

It's not that she's suddenly rejoined reality; it's that she's transferred her delusions to 2012.  As convinced as she was that her party would retain majority control, that's how certain she is that she'll get the gavel back two years from now - "It was a fluke, shadowy corporate money stole the election from us, Republicans will screw everything back up, Barack will top the ballot, etc."  In short, Crazy Nancy ain't gonna retire, folks, not yet.  It'll take Wave II to drive the stake through her black, flinty heart.

Yep, two more years of Stoneface as the, um, face of congressional Democrats.  Darn, what a shame.