The Commentariat -- November 3

Harry Reid isn't just Dracula, he isn't just Lazarus, he's our Leader and our whole caucus is thrilled that he's unbreakable and unbeatable. -- Sen. John Kerry

Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "For the third election in a row, Americans kicked a political party out of power." ...

... Dave Gilson of Mother Jones follows the money and finds that, for the most part, secret "dark money" & super-PACs got what they paid for -- in the races they heavily financed, their candidates won. ...

... George Packer of The New Yorker: "This midterm is the [Republican] party’s first salvo in its first order of business, to end Obama’s Presidency. There will be little mercy and a great deal of rancor.... I see one of the ugliest political periods in my lifetime, which has seen a few." ...

** ... Glenn Greenwald: "... for slothful pundits who want to derive sweeping meaning from individual races in order to blame the Left and claim that last night was a repudiation of liberalism, the far more rational conclusion -- given the eradication of 50% of the Blue Dog caucus -- is that the worst possible choice Democrats can make is to run as GOP-replicating corporatists devoted above all else to serving corporate interests in order to perpetuate their own power...." Greenwald updates his post with a snide rebuttal to Evan Bayh's New York Times op-ed, which you'll notice I didn't link -- but Greenwald does. ...

... Ari Melber of The Nation agrees with Greenwald. ...

... AND Paul Krugman adds, "So, we’re already getting the expected punditry: Obama needs to end his leftist policies, which consist of … well, there weren’t any, but he should stop them anyway. What actually happened, of course, was that Obama failed to do enough to boost the economy, plus totally failing to tap into populist outrage at Wall Street. And now we’re in the trap I worried about from the beginning: by failing to do enough when he had political capital, he lost that capital, and now we’re stuck." ...

... Dana Milbank: "At Rupert Murdoch's cable network, the entity that birthed and nurtured the Tea Party movement, Election Day was the culmination of two years of hard work to bring down Barack Obama - and it was time for an on-air celebration of a job well done." ...

... Meanwhile, back at the White House, time for some finger-pointing & back-stabbing. Nothing for attribution, of course. Glenn Thrush of Politico: "Frustrated current and former West Wing staffers, speaking on condition of anonymity, told POLITICO they hoped Tuesday night’s humbling losses would persuade President Barack Obama to pursue a much more sweeping fix than just the 'natural' post-election churn of personnel his administration has insisted will take place." ...

... John Dickerson of Slate: the voters returned Republicans to power, but not because they like them. They don't.

A friend writes -- It is the height of insanity that, for one of the most important jobs in the country, that of helping to RUN the fucking place, we have morons who believe that the only ones qualified to do that job are other morons with no qualifications.... Would you really prefer to have your chest cracked open by someone who has never been to medical school, and oh, by the way, HATES medicine, and has never read a book of any kind, never mind a medical book? ... Hey, we need a bridge built. Forget the engineers. My cousin hates bridges and the people who build them. He's never even been ON a bridge. Perfect!! Let's hire him! Let's hire Joe the Plumber to build the next space station, because all those NASA scientists have been doing that job way too long and it's time for a Teabagger to show them how it's done.

Andy Kroll of Mother Jones: "... there's something of a silver lining in Florida's elections. At the same time they elected numerous Republicans to office, Florida voters approved two constitutional amendments making it more difficult for the party in power to redraw state legislative and congressional districts in their favor." Here's the AP story on the Amendments 5 & 6.

If you want to watch and/or read John Boehner's victory speech, it wasn't as obnoxious as it was maudlin. You'll find it here. It could have been way worse. It could have been like Rand Paul's, which is here, but you probably will not want to hear, at least not if you've eaten recently.

Tim Egan of the New York Times: "For no matter your view of President Obama, he effectively saved capitalism. And for that, he paid a terrible political price." ...

... Bill Vlasic of the New York Times: "... interviews with G.M. and federal officials show decisions by the government have played a pivotal role in shaping [GM]’s leadership, its business strategies, and now its initial stock offering, which will raise an estimated $10.6 billion at the same time that it reduces the taxpayers’ stake in the company from 61 percent to below 40 percent." ...

... Alan Zibel of the AP: "The nation's homeownership rate remained at its lowest in more than a decade, hampered by a rise in foreclosures and weak demand for housing. The percentage of households that owned their homes was unchanged at 66.9 percent in the July-September quarter, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. That's the same as the April-June quarter." ...

... How Bad Is Foreclosuregate? George Packer of The New Yorker: "the banks have been servicing mortgages and chasing delinquents with the same carelessness and indifference to due process that they demonstrated when they underwrote and securitized the mortgages in the first place.... Criminal charges are likely, and justified." But there are some upsides: the banks may be forced to make the loan modifications they have resisted, the time it takes to straighten out the mess makes it easier for people to stay in the homes, & banks will have to start doing a better job of servicing their loans & protecting their investors.

Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post: "Former president George W. Bush writes in a new memoir that he briefly considered dropping his vice president, Richard B. Cheney, from his 2004 reelection ticket but said he still considers Cheney a steady adviser who helped him achieve his goals."

Post Mortems

Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor thinks he sees some lessons from Christine O'Donnell's defeat.

Mark Thompson of Time: "Rep. Ike Skelton, "chairman of the House Armed Services Committee – and a Missouri congressman for 34 years ... was one of the Democratic heavyweights felled in Tuesday's election."

Michael Scherer of Time: California Republican nominee Meg Whitman, who lost her bid for governor, along with $142 million, "largely spent her dough on keeping herself away from the voters: On consultants, on television spots, on a press team that largely acted like an offensive line."