Karl Rove has
defended his record in this election with the claim that
A shift of 77,611 votes would have given Republicans control of the House, according to Bush's political team. And a shift of 2,847 votes in Montana, or 7,217 votes in Virginia, or 41,537 votes in Missouri would have given a Republicans control of the Senate
Yeah Karl, and 70 698 more votes for Democrats would have given the Democrats an additional 18 seats, more than enough to take the house with less votes than you claim you would have needed to keep it
Just think about that one Karl. You needed 77 thousand votes in 15 close races to keep the house, we only needed another 70 thousand votes to take all of:
(seat) - (Republican margin over Democrat)
FL-13 - 386 votes
NC-08 - 465 votes
WY-AL - 970 votes
NM-02 - 1487 votes
OH-02 - 2323 votes
PA-06 - 3001 votes
NJ-07 - 3239 votes
WA-08 - 3514 votes*
OH-15 - 3536 votes
NY-25 - 3913 votes
NV-03 - 3966 votes
IL-06 - 4275 votes
VA-02 - 4888 votes
NY-29 - 5952 votes
CT-04 - 6645 votes
CO-04 - 7206 votes
NY-26 - 7397 votes
CA-04 - 7529 votes
* - lots of mail in votes here, we may still win this one, a couple of the others are in recount, but we're behind and frankly unlikely to make up the difference unless the provisional and absentee ballots buck the district trends greatly
(these numbers assume the Democrats need these numbers of additional votes, if we turned any Republican votes, our need diminishes ie if the GOP wins by 3, you can either find 3 new Democratic voters, or convince 2 Republican voters to vote for us and win by 1)
And of these close districts, just the best 15 for us would only have taken 48566 more votes. So there's the talking point, Karl, you're lucky that it's only a 29 seat shift. We get those 70,000 votes, and it would have been 48 seats.
Well, someone I knew in the military put it succinctly when he said "Wishing is for assholes". I wish it was 48 seats, and Karl wishes he kept 15, but taking 29 suits me fine and him not at all. My list above marks 18 seats for strong consideration in 2008, and 18 seats the GOP will have to expensively defend. It's a 50 state country now and the Democrats just proved they'll take the fight wherever it needs to go. En Garde, Karl.
As to the Senate, we took 24 of 33 races counting the independents. If Lieberman had admitted he was a republican, he would have gone down too. You couldn't beat a socialist buddy. Ha. The Yankees just lost the world series to a short-handed team and they're bragging the score was close. That's how stacked the senate was against us.
And overall, Karl, you took nothing. You failed to unseat a single Democratic incumbent and you failed to win a single Democratic open seat in either house and no governorships either. Georgia gerrymandered away and still failed. Shoe, meet other foot.
So don't try this close election crap Karl. The GOP was soundly beaten, using every dirty trick in the book. You were at your high water mark for deceptive and harassing robocalls, voter intimidation, and your legendary 72-hour GOTV program. All these failed. In 1994, your team beat the Democrats, and 25 seats you took were by less than 10,000 votes. That's just how wave elections go.
If just 13 of those had gone our way (just over half the closeys), there would be no speaker Gingrich. Did the GOP govern humbly as if their majority came on the backs of 25 close races? Absolutely not, so pardon us if we brush past your clowns in the halls of power without curtsying these days. The era of Democratic timidity is over.
Actually, no. Don't pardon us. You're the one who's going to need a pardon if we have anything to say about it.
Sources for the above chart include CNN and, TalkingPointsMemo.