Make it mean something: the least Republicans can do is lose for the right reason.(congressional elections)

FIRST, the sour grapes: Remember the glum little pouts on the faces of the network anchors twelve years ago, when it was the Republicans sweeping the map? Remember Peter Jennings's bitchy little aside--that the voters who elected a Republican majority were like infants having a "temper tantrum"? Remember the stricken, blood-drained faces of the liberal Conventional Wisdom crowd--your Judy Woodruffs, your Howard Fine-mans--as the returns came in, and the speed with which the phrases "extreme right wing" and "radical conservative" and "the Gingrich who stole Christmas" splashed their way into headlines across the country?

Boy, things have changed, haven't they? On Election Night, as the columns starting stacking up in the "D" section of the onscreen grid, the mood at CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS was so tastefully jubilant, so infectiously optimistic, that even I felt like celebrating. I opened an expensive bottle of champagne, poured a glass, raised a toast to Speaker Pelosi (Historic! A woman!), brought the glass to my lips, and was about to take a sip when suddenly I thought, "What are you so happy about? Your team lost." And so I put the glass down.

But I picked it back up again, to celebrate what was perhaps the clearest, cleanest example of left-wing media cocooning in recent memory. It was 1994, only backwards. Well, forwards, according to them. Still, it's enormously comforting for rightwing paranoids like me to reconfirm, every now and then, that yes, everyone is indeed against you, and yes, the media loves them their Democrats. "WolfBlitzer," I said to the screen, as Wolf & Co. were desperately trying to work the baffling onscreen graphic, "I toast you!"

Sour grapes portion now officially closed. Let's move on.

Wait. One more thing. Pelosi showing up at the Capitol the next day greeted by kids? Because, you know, that's what this election was all about, my friends--the children. I almost lost my lunch.

Okay, seriously now. No more sour grapes.

The good news is, there's something for everyone in this defeat. The libertarians among us can point accurately to certain squeaky-tight Senate races--Montana, especially--where the Libertarian-party candidate did quite well, stealing crucial votes from the Republican. Wet, northeast types can point to a total collapse of the Republican party in New England as a sign that fiscally pure Yankees no longer feel connected to the party. Social conservatives can highlight states like Ohio, where a lot of social conservatives just didn't vote, or the Senate race in Virginia, where a lot of them voted for the Democrat. And of course we lost the independents, who tend to decide these things.