Michael Barone

George Allen, as I am writing, is delivering a graceful concession speech. Under Virginia law, he was entitled to a state-financed recount of his 7,000-vote loss, a recount that would have lasted into December and that would have at least left open the question of whether Democrats would have a Senate majority. In this, he follows the tradition of good losers, like Richard Nixon, who in 1960 declined to challenge the presidential vote in Illinois and other states. Eight years later, he was elected president. Allen's problems in the 2006 campaign obviously destroyed any chance he had to run for president. His graceful withdrawal, however, leaves him other options. Introducing him in Old Town Alexandria was his colleague John Warner, whose term expires in 2008, when he will be 81. Warner may choose to retire then, after 30 years in the Senate. If so, it looks to me that Allen has positioned himself to be a serious candidate for the seat. This has happened before: Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington State lost for re-election in 1986 but came back in 1988 and won the state's other Senate seat, which he won again in 1994 and lost by only a very narrow margin in 2000.

Continue reading »

I have just returned to my hotel room after spending 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. in the decision desk room at Fox News Channel headquarters in New York. Because I was spending much of my time analyzing the tabulated vote as it was coming in for the obviously crucial House and Senate elections, I do not know for sure all the results–and so I may be getting some things wrong in this post. Also, I don't know yet the final percentages in many of the races. What I do know is that the Democrats have won control of the House, and seem to be on their way to about 230 seats–the number, as it happens, that Republicans ended up with after the election of 1994. That was a 52-seat gain for the Republicans; 230 seats would be a 27-seat gain for the Democrats. Impressive, and higher than I expected: Aside from the significant exception of 1994, neither party had made a net gain of more than 10 seats in the last 20 years. Also, it appears that the Democrats are on their way toward–if not absolutely assured of–a 51-49 majority in the Senate.

Continue reading »

With 78 percent of precincts reporting, Kentucky Rep. Anne Northup is narrowly trailing Democratic challenger John Yarmuth in a district long considered a national bellwether. As of 7:50 p.m., Yarmuth, the former publisher of an alternative weekly newspaper in Louisville, had 50.4 percent to Northup's 48.4 percent. As more votes are tallied in the next couple of hours, this bears watching. Long considered a tossup race by Cook Political Report, a skin-of-the-teeth-win by Northup could signal surprising Republican resilience in the nation's swing districts.

Continue reading »

You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

Those two sentences, spoken by John Kerry last week, tell a lot about the attitudes of many–not all, but many–Democrats who supported him for president in 2004 and, as this is written, are looking forward to Democratic victories this week. One thing they tell us is that Kerry's mind-set still is back in the Vietnam era. The statement today is literally untrue: No one is "stuck in Iraq" unless he or she volunteers for the military, and the educational levels of our military personnel are higher than those of civilians in the same age cohort. Kerry is evidently thinking back to the late 1960s, when there was a military draft, and someone who dropped out of college could find himself "stuck" in Vietnam.

Continue reading »