"If you don't govern from the middle AND keep your house clean, the Pendulum will swing. How the Republicans ever thought they could get away with pay for play when they were already perceived as in Big Business' pocket and ramming every bit of their right wing agenda down the throats of American's regardless of public opinion is beyond me. Changing districting and congressional rules to consolidate power was also a blatant power grab."

Redistricting is done every decade, so there is no doubt that it will occur again. And parties are free to change their own party rules- though it may not be a good idea.

Campaign finance reform was poorly done- but this was largely done by "middle of road politicans"; and probably McCain will pay for the consequeces of this law in terms of his political future- meanwhile it will continue to feed corruption until it's revoked. But probably will get worse before it gets any better.

"Note for left wingers: The swing was won by moderate Democrats. Joe Lieberman whipped the cut and runner. People are pissed about the lousy situation in Iraq, but there was no mandate for cut and run. There is a mandate for the rather obvious we need a new strategy. Iraq was also not top issue as many left wingers would like to pretend. Corruption was issue #1 followed by economy (its the trickle down (on) effect stupid), and Iraq/terror."

I think you right about this. I think a major political mistake [but maybe not a major mistake if all you want is a victory in Iraq] was republicans saying to the public that they had to vote republican or the dems would cut and run. A similar vein was the republicans saying you had to vote republican candiates or you wouldn't get conservative judges. There are and were truth to these ideas, but it's not a good political move [for number political reasons, e.g. politics is local, "what have you done for me lately", etc]- though not sure Republicans could done any better in terms of any political moves. I think that when it comes right down to it, the republicans needed the dems to shoot themselves in the foot again and again- and Kerry almost pulled it of from them, but I guess it was too late in the game and Dems managed to successful stifle him.

"Surprising Pelosi seems to get it claiming to have learned from Republican mistakes and wanting to govern from the middle. I'm skeptical but hopeful."

It's not very surprising, after all it's a typical political move. I'm fairly certain your hope will be crushed.

"Felt we had to make this change, but was worried about how far the pendulum would swing the other way. Hope the current leads hold for the senate, but a 50/50 split would be OK. A continuous string of VP votes would do nothing but harm Republicans as a futile example of determination to ignore opinion outside the administration. 2 "Independent" Democrats should aslo keep the leftwingers in check. It's time for Bush to govern like he promised in the first election - build consensus."

I'm sure Bush will continue to build censensus and maybe MSM will be less pschotic than it has been- but they still have ads to sell and they still need to entertain us, so I wouldn't count on much change.

"Can't wait for some heat on CEO pay. Read the articles on the pissed off bottom Half? The bottom half of the top 1% that is. A new kind of class warfare - the merit class versus the connected class (could it be nerds vs greeks or mentally adept vs socially adept?). "

Sorry to hear that you can't wait, because you will probably wait a long time- CEO pay is a matter that stockholders decide upon. It seems to me that we are currently in the beginning of a Bull Market and therefore profits will rise and CEO will probably even get more huge amounts of money. Now, it's possibly the markets could crash: war, disease, earthquakes, impactors, or whatever reason we could get a recession [and then you will get to hear much about this].