heavynews lives... !

Heavynews was a regular on KIA and once spoke with a progressive, though quite sardonic, voice. He attributes Bill Clinton's getting serviced in the Oval Office pantry as having done serious damage to his populist good ol' boy's idealism. Now he's true bl... er, Red, as in "Better dead than... "

Still he almost resembled his old self when he recently waxed on post-Decision '06 via email. Almost brought a tear to my eye:

Personally, I think two years of Speaker Pelosi will be energizing for the Republican Party. I think it will be relatively easy to take back the House in two years -- Do you really think Tom Delay and Mark Foley's old districts suddenly got all blue? Nah, just a punishment thing. I can understand that.

Glad Chaffee is gone -- if this had been a 50-50 Senate, he would have probably gone all Jeffords on us.

Disappointed, really, that Harold Ford Jr. (and Michael Steele, too) lost.

Glad to see that, at best, the Kos Kids went 1-for-3-- losing the one that really mattered to them, in Connecticut.

Glad to see George Allen off the table as a national candidate. Knucklehead.

(BTW, if you had told me before this fall that I could take Mark Warner off the table as a Democraticnational candidate and all it was going to cost me was taking Allen off the table, I would have made that deal in a second. And you'll throw in John Kerry for free? Hmmmm, I'll have to think about that.)

The Big Picture item, from my standpoint, is that the Democrats had to run more conservative-sounding candidates in order to win in most situations. Actually more conservative? We'll see. That had to be the first step in becoming a mainstream party again. And one night, as much fun as it has been for them, doesn't accomplish that.

To the contrary, the election of these more moderate Democrats has the effect of pushing to the forefront some of the most liberal Dems who are in leadership positions. There's a disconnect there that will have to be reconciled at some point. Probably in the 2008 primary smackdown.

Folks are tired of the war. The English were exhausted at the end of World War II -- voted out Churchill. Truman, who won the freaking war, was largely reviled by the end of his full term. Folks are tired of the war, but the real war has barely begun.

The surrender monkeys are ascendant for a brief moment. We'll hope for the best.

What 1 for 3?? Webb & Tester both were Netroots candidates not wanted in the beginning by Schumer, Reid, Rahm, et al., and there's a slew of House rookies owing their new digs to the Blogarythmic Function.

Meanwhile, why don't we let's strangle this baby in the crib, Heavy m'boy: George Bush is NO Winny Churchill or Give 'em Hell Harry! And he will never find redemption in history's eyes. Gotta come up w/a better comparison -- say, Hitler or Stalin.

Well, hey, they're a lot closer!