From my personal blog:
Wow, does it ever feel good to win one for a change, especially after the gut-wrenching 2004 debacle. It was so amazing and wholly unpredictable how it unfolded over the course of two years.
Bush bragging about his enormous stock of political capital, then facing sound defeat in his attempt to radically transform Social Security. Bush, Frist, Santorum and the whole right wing embarrassing themselves with a pathetically misguided intervention into one family's medical tragedy. The "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" Katrina/FEMA travesty, revealing to all the Bush administration's woeful elevation of political patronage over the demands of effective government policy and practice. Dubya's humiliating plunge in the presidential approval polls. The ever-growing evidence (unfortunately, in the form of a continually increasing American and Iraqi death toll) of the utter failure of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice Iraq strategy. The first indications, coming last November, of the end of conservative electoral dominance in the form of the Corzine and Kaine gubernatorial victories, followed by Democratic recruitment of a host of energetic and well-qualified challengers to GOP incumbents for the 2006 campaign. Wave upon wave of Republican scandal news: Abramoff, Ney, Cunningham, Foley. New polls showing widespread voter discontent with Congress and with the country's direction, and hinting at favorable Democratic prospects in many Congressional and gubernatorial races. A drumbeat of revelations: the "warrants-are-for-sissies" wiretapping program, the NIE report, the Plame/Wilson investigation and the arrest of Scooter Libby. Widespread talk that Dems could take the House, though the Senate was almost certainly out of our grasp this time around. Allen's macacca moment captured on video. Then newer polls showing the likelihood of a Democratic takeover of the House and the slim possibility of a similar outcome in the Senate. News accounts of Bush and Rove's strange complacency concerning the upcoming congressional election, leading to speculation of some GOP Harry Potter-like magic protective electoral power stashed away and ready for deployment. John Kerry's botched joke. Last-minute shifts in poll results in individual races, fueled by scandal news, megatons of campaign cash, and obnoxius negative advertising, suggesting to some pundits that the GOP might prevail in the end, particularly in races in Montana, Tennessee, Missouri, and Virginia and even maybe in Rhode Island, Maryland, or New Jersey. Alarming reports of fraudulent GOP robocalls designed to scare away would-be Democratic voters.
Then, the smoke cleared -- and we had won. Wow.
I made campaign contributions to Menendez, Webb, Casey, McCaskill, Tester, and the DNC - victors all. Right now I'm not missing that cash at all - 'twas money well spent.