What Does It Mean?

After any election, there is discussion of what the election means. I wonder what yesterday's election means? There are many suggestions out there in the public square today.

Here's one observation I'm interested in that is offered byAustin Bay:

"The big race in 2006 was Lamont versus Lieberman. Joe Lieberman won. Joe’s core issue: VIctory in the War on Terror, which means victory in Iraq. That’s a warning to Nancy Pelosi and Co. If they go “nutsroots-Lamont Left” they will squander their victory. Ed Driscoll suggests 2006 is a race-to-the center. Lieberman has carved out one the strongest personal political position in America. For Joe, it’s November lemonade made from the bitter lemons of August."

I think another suggestion was actually offered on election day by Tom Sowell:

"Democrats have learned to avoid admitting to being liberals and this year are running a number of moderate candidates.

If these new moderate candidates are elected and give the Democrats control of Congress, that control will be exercised by senior Democrats who will hold leadership positions -- and all of them are liberal extremists, whether people like Nancy Pelosi in the House or Ted Kennedy and John Kerry in the Senate.

Getting people to vote for moderates, in order to put extremists in power, may be the newest and biggest voter fraud."

Both these suggestions suppose that this election involved, at least on the surface, a bit of a move toward the right of the political spectrum because this election seems to bring a few more hawkish Democrats to Congress. But, Austin Bay seems to suspect the Democrat leadership will not notice this lesson, and Tom Sowell seems to suspect that the Democrat leadership actually designed their strategy to gain Congress by fooling the voters.

What does this election mean? I think both of these suggestions are worth considering, and, unfortunately, I'm tending to agree with Sowell because there also seems to have been a strong strain in the electorate this time to throw the incumbents out. Yet, after throwing the Republican bums outs, the replacement leaders in Congress still look like incumbent bums, only now they have the big D after their names.