A Pretty Pathetic Victory for Bush

From Another Liberal Blog

Assuming Bush gets New Mexico and Iowa, he will have gotten the lowest percentage of electoral votes (54%) of any incumbent running for reelection since Wilson. If those two states should swing Kerry's way (NM might), it'll be even lower.

He will have won with the lowest percentage of the popular vote (51%) of any incumbent running for reelection since Truman (well, technically since Clinton, but he also ran against Perot, who was a more significant 3rd-party candidate than Thurmond and Wallace were in '48)

He will have won by the lowest margin of the popular vote (3.5M) of any incumbent running for reelection since Truman (2.1M, and back then only 50M voted).

So, this is NOT a smashing incumbent victory like those of Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, LBJ or FDR. It was a bit pitiful for an incumbent, frankly, especially after 9/11. There's really no mandate here; this is still basically a 50-50 country, and we'll live to fight and win another day.

Things Improving in Texas According to Dem Chair

For the first time in 32 years we have gained ground in the legislature. Since 1972 we have lost seats or just barely held our ground. This year we gained 1 seat and we won it in the best way possible- the 20 year incumbent House Appropriations Chair, Talmadge Heflin, was defeated by Hubert Vo. Heflin is the architect of the plan that cut more than 150,000 kids off of their health insurance and has shown a callousness toward the people of Texas that would make Tom DeLay blush. Hubert Vo beat him with a great campaign and the people of Texas will benefit.

We also defeated 2 of the freshmen GOPers who were at the center of the TRMPAC scandal- Jack Stick lost to Mark Strama in Austin and Ken Mercer lost to David Leibowitz in San Antonio.

In Dallas County we elected a Democratic sheriff- Lupe Valdez, the first female sheriff of Dallas County. (el - I will add the first openly gay county official in Texas - a Dallas gay female sheriif, imagine that.)

And our number of base Democratic voters went up by 6 points since 2002. If we can do that again between now and 2006 we will sweep this state in a landslide.