One way or another you're hungover this morning.....
Wow. Just Wow. A 22 seat pick-up in the Texas House had to exceed even the most optimistic of Republican expectations. More on Texas Democrats later.
One surprising casualty: Texas Democratic leader Jim Dunham. To say the party of the Donkey is retrenching is an understatement.
How bad was it? Formerly reliable Galveston County is turning Red. That's pretty bad (If you're a Democrat)
One bright note for the Blue party: There is a beach head. Dallas County remained blue, which bodes well for the future if they could survive this carnage.
Even the news-ish organizations are struggling to find a silver lining. The InterLeft piled it in early last night, with many only posting that Texas voters were ignorant or stupid before shutting down. Tough election for Matt Angle and the Colorado Model.
Speaking of the Colorado Model, those election fears they were trumpeting proved unfounded as did the voter fraud hyped up by the Tea Party groups. One has to think all of the noise and fury served to tamp most of that down.
Democratic judges are on the political endangered list. Much like Democratic members of the Texas House.
Political history was made last night, as Sylvia Garcia became the first incumbent County Commissioner to lose re-election in 36 years. That she was beaten by political newcomer Jack Morman, a candidate who ChronBlog had considerable issues identifying, much less getting the spelling on his name right, shows you just how big the Tsunami really was in Texas. (On a tangential note: How bad was ChronBlog's political coverage leading up to this election? There was some good work turned in by Chris Moran and Bradley Olson & Joe Holley, but the work by Fikac and the opinion writers was slightly less than worthless.)
Speaking of Holley, His overview of the election is excellent. Of note are the losses by Kristi Thibaut and Ellen Cohen, two ACORN-backed, InterLeft fave-raves who took it on the chin. (Also to come, a look at the non-candidate winners and losers in this election.)
In the end, Edwards wasn't close. You knew he was done when he started releasing internal polls showing him still down, but less than independent polls had projected.
I got it backwards, Prop 3 was soundly defeated while Prop 1 narrowly survived. Prop 2 was dead in the water. More here.
Another surprise: The KISD bond proposal narrowly passed. In an anti-government, fiscally tight year that and Prop 1 passing surprised me.
And finally....
Mark Lisheron of the Texas Watchdog explores the changing role of newspapers in political campaigns. My belief is that this election marks a sea-change in how candidates handle and address the media. Like all change however, I expect it to unfold slowly over time instead of there being a rapid decline in candidates talking to ed boards. You still have one major party that looks to them first and reviews them uncritically (unless they pick the wrong party) after all.
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