we still don't know for sure how many seats the dems will pick up overall in the US house, and while it still looks likely that they'll retake the senate, too, it's theoretically possible they won't. (it all comes down to virginia and montana; dems have small leads in both races.)

here's what we do know for sure:

it's a bad day to be a republican. a terrible day, even. what do republicans have to feel good about? not much. propositions banning same-sex marriage passed in several states, and that's just about all they have on a national level. locally, they won the marion county prosecutor race (but only by a hair; they had expected to win by a large margin) and several statewide races, but still that's not much to crow about.

no matter how adamantly people like rishawn insist that there were no "overriding themes" for the election, this was a clear repudiation of george bush and his enablers in the GOP. the country is fed up with bush and fed up with the war in iraq. (and it would seem the rest of the star ed board disagrees with him, judging from today's star editorial.)

it's a great day to be a democrat. 'nuff said.

voting machines are messed up. new voting machines caused all sorts of problems, not just throughout indiana (where they created an enormous mess in delaware county that will take weeks to sort out), but nationwide.

indiana's voter id law still sucks. conservatives (once they get over their shell-shock) will loudly proclaim that the small number of voter id complaints received last night proves that the voter id law is good. of course, lack of evidence is not proof. the state was saturated with info about the law, so voters knew that id would be required. perhaps not too many people were turned away at the polls (although some were for sure), but how many people simply didn't bother going to the polls because they knew they couldn't get a satisfactory id?

dickerson and his supporters are sore losers. to the best of my knowledge, eric dickerson has still not conceded his defeat, even though it was apparent by 10pm last night that he would lose. c'mon eric, act like the big man you pretended to be during the campagin and conceded already.

his supporters and surrogates are worse. the best evidence of this is the comments for matt tully's column today. tully writes as much as he likes julia carson, he thinks this should be her last term, due to her health problems. but he writes: "Don't for one second mistake that for the typical anti-Julia sentiment that flows to my e-mail inbox so often. The hardest thing about saying it's time for Carson to start wrapping things up is the guaranteed "attaboys" that message will bring from knuckleheads who punctuate their criticism of Carson with talk of her race."

as if on cue, the comments are a chorus of attaboys and irrational "i hate teh julia" screeds. meanwhile, over at advance indiana, gary grabs on to that column as well as julia's acceptance speech (in which she made the shockingly true claims that dickerson is a "used car salesman" and that he lies regularly) to rage, rage against the dying of the right. gary has proven repeatedly that he is incapable of referring to julia or the race in the 7th without making some sort of petty dig, and today was no exception. hopefully, now that the election is over, gary will finally chill out a bit. what happened to gary's blog over the past few months has been a tragedy, as once upon a time he used to be a republican that liberals like me could respect. here's hoping he regains his sanity soon.

update: i've been scanning google news for some indication, some hint that eric dickerson has at least acknowledged that he lost (if not make a concession speech, which is probably too much to hope for). the closest i've found is this wthr story, which suggests that maybe he kinda did. but if you watch the video (complete with dickerson doing a "victory dance" with his overwhelmingly white supporters), it's clear that he has not.

anyway, can anyone tell me what this sentence from the wthr story is supposed to mean? "Still, Dickerson performed a victory for newfound respect."¶

...according to Ms. Carson an hour ago, Dickerson still hasnt called and conceded. I doubt if he could ever bring himself to do so. ¶