Tonight, Americans across the country (well, two mid-Atlantic states) voted overwhelmingly against the President Bush and the GOP, sending shockwaves across the political landscape. By electing Mark Warner and James McGreevy, the voters have clearly repudiating the conservative overreach we've seen this year: the new faith based initiatives, the President's repudiation of Kyoto, and the GOP's massive tax cuts for the wealthy.
While the GOP is clearly in spin mode and pretending that tonight's Democratic triumphs were only about "local issues" without any bearing on next year, the voters sent a clear message that they were poised to vote out congressional converatives the next chance they got. Both Congress in the midterm elections next year and the White House in 2004 are ripe for the picking.
Clearly, the next move for the President, as well as Rep. Denny Hastert and Sen. Trent Lott, is to pull back on the reigns. To salvage their party and perhaps cling to the majority next year, they'll undoubtedly take a step back. The recent grand talk about major changes to America's education policy and industry-friendly energy and health care bills, not to mention the curtailing of the Clean Air Act and other environmental regulations, will quickly fade away and give way to a less ambitious agenda.
While losing the White House last year was a bitter pill, tonight has shown that this will be a short-lived stint as the opposition party for Democrats. These votes by 5% of the population after campaigns about Virginia's regional transportation funding and New Jersey's school budget has transformed American political history forever.