"Two days after the GOP's sweeping victories...." says a TPM writer, apparently having down several quarts of AP's "GOP Sweep" kool aid and look at who actually won most of the contests and the most important contests this week.
The Dems picked up two seats in Congress, including one that's been a Republican seat for more than 100 years. Dms have a stronger and more liberal majority in the House -- where national policy is being made -- now than they did last week. (Making the Dems 5 for 5 in special elections for congressional seats this year.)
Obama's favorable rating of 56.1% is actually a tad higher than it was on Oct. 6 of last year (56%), just a month before he was elected in a landslide.
Americans prefer Dems over Reps for Congress, and prefer them even more -- and by a wider margin -- than they did this time a year ago.
In the East, north of the Pennsylvania border, there are 51 congressional districts representing 34 million people. -- and Reps have a whopping two seats. In the West, California is trending strongly to the left.
Dems won the big city mayoral races in Seattle, Atlanta, Charlotte (first time in a quarter century here), Minneapolis, St. Paul, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Chapel Hill and Detroit.  In New York, the Republican incumbent outspent his Dem challenger 14 to 1, -- spending $105 million and pouring $90 million of his own money into the race -- and just barely won an election he was expected to take in a cake walk.
In Maine, a measure that will allow dispensaries to supply marijuana to patients for medicinal purposes easily won approval.  In Colorado, Breckenridge voted overwhelmingly to allow adults to legally possess small amounts of marijuana.
Gay rights meaures won in Washington and Kalamazoo, Michigan, and narrowly lost in Maine, while gay candidates won the day in Akron, Maplewood, Minn., Houston, Chapel Hill, St. Petersburg, Charlotte and Salt Lake City.  Catch that?  Openly gay candidates won in four cities south of the Mason Dixon Line, including in the heart of that most homophobic of religious states, Utah.
Two TABOR initiatives -- the precious little project of the neocons who want to drown government in the bathtub -- were on ballots Tuesday, and both lost.
In Ohio, voters approved a measure that will allow casinos in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo.
As for the GOP's two marquee wins: Back in 2001, at the same point in Duby'a reign of error, the election of Democratic governors over Republicans in those same two states -- Virginia and New Jersey -- it meant absolutely nothing then, just as it does now. (Back then, the GOP and its talking heads were falling all over themselves to point out that the Dem victories were meaningless on the national scene, and they were right.) In fact, it's a 30-year trend. In New Jersey, the party in power in the White House hasn't won the governor's office since 1985 and the party in power in the White House hasn't won the governor's office in Virginia since 1977.
Ruy Teixeira's numbers should silence the "Obama was repudiated" song and dance:
"In New Jersey...it's significant that Mr. Obama's approval rating among 2009 voters (57 percent) was identical to the percent of the vote he received there in 2008. In Virginia, while the president's 2009 approval rating was 5 points less than his 2008 voting result, the 2009 electorate was also far more conservative than last year's. Besides being far older and whiter than in 2008, the voters in Virginia on Tuesday said they had supported John McCain last November by 8 points, meaning they were not favorably inclined toward President Obama to begin with. In fact, given that only 43 percent of these voters said they supported Mr. Obama last November, his 48 percent approval rating among them does not indicate a shift away from him but rather toward him."
In both Virginia and New Jersey, the Dems held their own in the state legislative races, and across the country, Democrats still hold 60 legislative chambers and control 55% of the nation's partisan legislative seats.
Sweeping victories for the GOP? Please.
And while AP and the talking heads tried to paint the election results as an omen of impending doom for Obama and the Democrats, at least the Washington Post had enough sense (first time I've said that in years) to get it right. After last week's election, it's clear that a civil war -- "a pitched battle in the works between the Republicans' right flank and even-further-right flank" -- is ripping the GOP apart.  If that's what they call winning, more power to 'em!