In a discussion I was having prior to the election, Paul Newman's The Verdict came up and it brought to mind the closing argument of Newman's character Frank Galvin, and then I saw it on Fox Movie Channel this evening:

You know, so much of the time we're just lost. We say, "Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true." And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead... a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims... and we become victims. We become... we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. But today you are the law. You ARE the law. Not some book... not the lawyers... not the, a marble statue... or the trappings of the court. See those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are... they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, "Act as if ye had faith... and faith will be given to you." IF... if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And ACT with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.

It seemed an apt metaphor for what Democrats across the country had felt about politics in our country for the past years - the distrust, the powerlessness, the victimhood, the doubt of our institutions and ourselves.

But yesterday a nation of citizens rose up and had faith and delivered political justice. It was a good day.

Unlike most folks, I love the spin that a Democratic tsunami was a win for centrism. I adopt Broderism for this purpose. Consider the real exercise of politics - defining the middle.

A Democratic landslide is a win for centrism, if not conservatism:

There's spin and then there's spin. Larry Kudlow is playing dirty pool: "Look at blue dog conservative Dem victories, and look at Northeast liberal GOP defeats. The changeover in the House may well be a conservative victory, not a liberal one."

Jim Webb is the poster boy for this argument. WONDERFUL! Jim Webb the pro-choice, pro-civil unions, pro-minimum wage, pro-balanced budgets, pro-environment, anti-privatizing social security, anti-Iraq War conservative. I'll take it. So Webb is the right side of the political argument and then we move left for the other side - say Bernie Sanders. The middle is somewhere between  Bernie Sanders and Jim Webb. Sign me up.

Some of you may know that I think Jon Tester may be the most significant politician to emerge from this election. I think he can and does represent a new breed of Democrat - authentic, comfortable with his identity, proud to be a Democrat, not afraid to fight and yes - from the West.

I have been speechifying against the proposed Barack Obama model of new Democrat that has captured the fancy of the Beltway. I think that Obama has the wrong political formula for the Democratic future. I think Jon Tester has the right one.

Voter turnout in North Carolina was low, a product of having no Senate race this year. Turnout was higher in District 11, where voters elected Heath Shuler to replace Republican Rep. Charles Taylor.

Turnout was also high in Durham County, where District Attorney Mike Nifong won reelection, despite his questionable (at best) handling of the Duke rape allegations. Nifong's challengers, Lewis Cheeks and Steve Monks (a write-in candidate), drew 39 percent and 12 percent of the vote, respectively, giving Nifong a plurality of the total votes.

There isn't much religious diversity in Congress, but after yesterday's election, there's a bit more.

[Keith] Ellison, a state lawmaker and lawyer, has become the first Muslim elected to Congress, and the first nonwhite elected to Congress from Minnesota.

Advocates of stem cell research appear to have won a narrow victory in Missouri.

The amendment, known as the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, guarantees that any federally allowed stem cell research and treatment can occur in Missouri, including research using human embryos.

The state constitutional amendment was proposed in response to legislative efforts to criminalize stem cell research in the state.

Claire McCaskill's victory in her race for the U.S. Senate was also narrow. McCaskill supports stem cell research, while her vanquished opponent, Jim Talent, opposes it.

After ignoring (at best) or attacking (at worst) Democrats for the last six years, the president is suddenly in the mood to search for "common ground," starting with the minimum wage.

President George W. Bush on Wednesday said increasing the national minimum wage is likely an issue on which he could cooperate with Democratic leaders in Congress.

Bush knows a minimum wage increase will be on his desk, and he knows that a veto won't sit well in light of the overwhelming support for a minimum wage increase, as evidenced by ballot measures in Nevada, Missouri, Ohio, Colorado, Arizona, and Montana. He also knows that he'll receive a bipartisan bill because Republicans will be afraid to oppose a minimum wage increase. The best he can do for conservatives is damage control, and that will require a conciliatory posture that the president isn't used to assuming. Does he have it in him?

As readers of this blog know, I was quite committed to defeating Joe Lieberman. Mostly due to his kowtowing ways to Bush and the GOP. Also due to his horrible role on Iraq. And finally due to his role as moralizer and criticizer in chief of Democrats - the Fox Democrat.

But Joe Lieberman won. But it is a hollow victory for him. He is no longer a Dem. His voice on Iraq is no longer relevant due to the big Dem win yesterday. His role as a Fox Dem is no longer operative.

Yes Joe will chair some committees and do nothing on them and no one will pay attention to them. Frankly, no one ever did. Joe is not a leader in the Senate, not a leader in the Democratic Party nor a leader on Iraq.

Joe is now basically going to be a pork barrel politician bringing home bacon for Connecticut. He has no national role and no Party role.

He is the equivalent of say, John Ensign or Norm Coleman. Except he will vote for Harry Reid as leader. A big except. Joe won't be happy and may try to squirm out of his commitment. We'll have to watch for that.

Whether Democrats take control of the Senate (which we can guardedly say seems probable) or share power (with Cheney as the Republican tiebreaker), the nuclear option is off the table. Even if 50 Republicans are in the Senate, they won't have the political will to threaten an end to the judicial filibuster, both because threats of extremism aren't playing well with voters and because the nuclear option only made sense in the context of a permanent Republican majority. Republicans don't need the judicial filibuster during the next two years, but they'll want to have it intact if a Democrat takes the presidency in 2008. The dream of a permanent Republican government (a nightmare for the rest of the country) is gone, and with it the nuclear option.

If the Senate has 50 Democrats (grudgingly counting Lieberman as a de facto Dem voter, an assumption that remains to be tested), they can use the filibuster to save us from the worst judicial appointments during the next two years. If Democrats control the Senate, they can block judicial nominees who would move the federal judiciary even further to the right. (Republicans did this effectively during the Clinton years.) The president will have to learn that "advise and consent" doesn't mean "rubber stamp"; if he can't heed that lesson, his nominees should be consigned to oblivion. Two years from now, a better president is likely to give the Senate better choices. The country can wait, if that's what it takes to restore balance to the judiciary.

Reported now. Rumsfeld resigns.

At least he understood the message of this election if other Republicans have not.

Is TailRunner Joe the replacement? To do that he would cost the Dems the Senate. Would Joe hurt the Dems like that? Stupid question. Of course he would.

Not Joe - Bush announces . . . Bob Gates as the replacement.

Joe must be heartbroken.

Both Jon Tester and Jim Webb have won their races in Montana and Virginia but want to make sure that every vote is counted. We expect to have official results soon but can happily declare today that Democrats have taken the majority in the U.S. Senate.

More on the flip.

The complaints about suspect voting machines have become bipartisan:

In New Jersey, Republicans complained that the machines were rigged in favor of incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Menendez; in Virginia, where Democratic Senate candidate Jim Webb's name was truncated on the interface of voting machines in several counties, Democrats complained that the machines were rigged in favor of the Republicans.

It's time for a bipartisan solution: machines that are easy to use and that produce a verifiable paper trail.

Reforming the mechanics of elections will help restore voter confidence, but better voting procedures won't stop the dirty tricks: