The Powerless Middle

Hendrik Hertzberg, even-keeled as ever, offers some consolations to those of us on the losing side. E.g., even though the Republicans netted four senate seats, the Democrats won substantially more raw total votes for senatorial candidates than the Republicans did.

He's right about how so many of us really expected Kerry to win---didn't just hope he would, or irrationally believe he would, but formed justified rational beliefs on the basis of the evidence available to us. It wasn't just Kerry supporters, either. Lots of people, some of them centrists, some of them officially non-partisan, some of them Republicans and Bush supporters, also thought Kerry would win. (Indeed, the untold story of the election is that Kerry was president-elect from about 11:00 am until 6-7 pm on Nov. 2, when the exit polls showed him winning and lobbyists began scurrying to get on board the Kerry transition team.)

And we were all wrong.