Intelligent design

The Mandarin is now a believer in intelligent design: the voters have sent Katherine Harris into a well-deserved retirement.

The Mandarin's prediction for the House was thankfully too conservative, although one small disappointment in the overall delightful picture was Tammy Duckworth finishing two percentage points short of upsetting Peter Roskam in the Illinois 6th.

In the Senate, if the razor-thin Democratic leads in Virgina and Montana hold up through the recounts and lawsuits, the Mandarin's guess will have been spot on (allowing for mistaking Socialist Independent Bernie Casey in Vermont as a Democrat - sorry, Bernie).

Anyway, the voters have comprehensively repudiated Shrub, Big Dick, Karl "Shrub's Brain" Rove, Rummy [update: Rummy takes one for the team], Condi and the whole incompetent crowd of neocons and their camp followers. Golly, how will the Wall Street Journal editorial page spin this one?

It was worth the long wait, boys and girls. A boatload of bums have been thrown out. Now let's hope the Democrats can deliver on their promise to be different.

On to 2008!


Original photo caption: Sarasota, Florida, January 16, 2004. Harris lost her long-shot quest for the Senate on Tuesday after a gaffe-prone campaign that saw the former Florida election official shunned by her own party chieftains. (Peter Muhly/Reuters)