The first installment of the inevitable intra-party Democratic debate over what yesterday’s victory means has been stimulated by Fox Newsish claims that Dems took Congress by running conservative candidates who will be at odds with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. And this spin war has converged with a pre-election argument about where Dems should look for a national majority.One Democratic spin on the results has been that the Donkey Party won by consolidating its Blue State strength, snuffing congressional Republicans who had previously survived by pretending to be more moderate than the national GOP leadership.There’s some truth to this take, if only because a national “wave” election tends to take out the Nancy Johnsons and the Jim Leaches who indeed were living on borrowed time.But the results do not provide a good argument for Democrats to write off Enemy Territory and focuse on their Blue State geographical base.15 of the 28 Democratic House gains were in Red States, most of them in Red or Purple Districts.3 of the 6 new Senators are from Red States.3 of the 6 gubernatorial pickups for Democrats were in Red States.About half of the state legislative gains were in Red States.We are beginning to turn Purple States blue, and Red States purple. I can’t imagine why any Democrat would think of this as bad news, but there is clearly a point of view among Democratic intellectuals that messing around with voters in Red State areas, particularly in the South, represents an exposure to ideological contamination.I am beginning to slog my way through Tom Schaller’s recent book, Whistling Past Dixie, that makes the most intellectually credible case I’ve read so far for Democrats to eschew any southern strategy. I will probably review the book somewhere or other, but the bottom line is that Schaller’s worried about the ideological risks involved in any Democratic strategy that involves the weird, religiously-oriented, “backward” South, as opposed to allegedly progressive ground in the Midwest and West.I don’t know how much time ol’ Tom has spent in the Rocky Mountain West, which he posits as a vastly more progressive region than the South, but I have to tell you there are a whole lot of rednecks there, which doesen’t bother me but should bother Schaller. And I’m not sure I understand why it’s okay for Democrats to focus on states like Indiana, which have not gone Democratic since 1964, but not okay to pursue votes in places like Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennesse, Kentucky and Georgia, which have cast their electoral votes for Democrats in the last decade or so.On the more general point of whether it’s a problem for Democrats that their freshman class has some alleged “conservatives” on board, the much-esteemed Mark Schmitt nailed it over at TAPPED:

Unlike Tom Schaller, I have to admit, I wasn’t bothered at all by the spin that the Democrats won because they embraced a lot of candidates with conservative views and backgrounds….

[T]he bulk of the Democratic majority came from Northeast, Midwest and Mountain seats where the winners were not conservative.So the spin that the Democrats won because they moved in a more conservative direction is inaccurate. But so what? Consider the alternative spin, which is that Democrats are a bunch of extreme liberals, who will be as far out of touch as the Republicans and who will be destroyed in 2008? I’d rather have a party that’s fairly liberal but has a reputation or image as moderate than one that’s really moderate and over-cautious but has a reputation for being extremely liberal, which was the situation through much of the 19990sThe fact is that the Democratic Party has been a centrist, moderate party for some time, in the sense that on balance the party’s governors, legislators and policy agenda fully represent the center of public opinion. (As shown, for example, by the fact that the viewpoint of independents was very much in line with that of Democrats.) But it was a damaged brand; it needed a remake of its image. This is a chance to do it, by showing that the party has in fact incorporated the center. Highly visible veterans, openly religious candidates, and social conservatives like Casey send a cultural signal, not an ideological one, a signal that this is a party you can be comfortable in. Sometimes you need to seem like you have changed just to make people understand what’s been going on all along.

Truth is, moderate Democratic candidates do pretty well all over the country, given a chance. But if we perversely decide not to compete where such candidates do particularly well, we will handicap our party, just as Karl Rove handicapped Republicans by demanding partisan loyalty to a highly ideological agenda.

I’ve just watched about all I could stand of George W. Bush’s press conference announcing the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. Not surprisingly, he got a lot of questions about the implications of yesterday’s elections, and started yammering about his desire to work with Democrats.Yeah, right. Next thing he’ll be telling us he wants to be “a uniter, not a divider,” and usher in a “responsibility era.” Day before yesterday, he was finishing up a campaign swing that focused on the argument that the Democratic Party was basically a terrorist front organization. And even in today’s remarks, he couldn’t stop himself from suggesting that anyone who questions his and Rumsfeld’s sorry record on Iraq is undermining the troops and frightening the Iraqis.As for the timing of the decision to finally let Rummy go, a couple of years too late, I’m sure we’ll hear from right-wing chatterers that it couldn’t happen before Election Day because it would have discouraged the conservative “base.” If, God forbid, I were a conservative base voter, I’d be pretty damn insulted by the idea that Rumsfeld, who has done more to discredit Republican national security bona fides than anyone not named Dick Cheney, was one of my heroes. The real issue is that the administration needs to pretend it’s rethinking Iraq before Democrats ride into Washington, take over congressional committee gavels, and start asking questions about Iraq that should have been asked by Congress a long time ago.Rumsfeld’s proposed replacement, former CIA chief Bob Gates, is currently president of Texas A&M University. Let me be the very first to suggest his replacement in College Station: my colleague The Moose. He’d love to return to his native Texas; his original strategy of joining the staff of Governor Kinky Friedman hasn’t exactly worked out. And the timing’s perfect: he could get out of the political arena on a high note, just after the humiliation of Karl Rove and the apotheosis of Joe Lieberman, and before John McCain has a chance to break his heart. Despite his yankeefied higher education in New York and Ann Arbor, the Moose is totally an Aggie Wannabee. I can attest to the fact that he knows every word of the Aggie War Hymn, and can sing it at a considerable decibal level.So if anything really good is to come of the latest Bush maneuver, maybe this is it: A&M President Marshall Wittmann. To paraphrase the War Hymn:Rummy’s horns are sawed offRummy’s horns are sawed offRummy’s horns are sawed offShort! A!

There’s still a lot of confusion about where things stand in the Senate, but now that the networks have called Montana for Tester, we are going to have a Democratic Senate. In VA, Webb is up 7,000 votes with nothing much out but a couple of very small boxes and then some provisional ballots. The provos will almost certainly boost Webb’s margin. As things currently stand, Allen can ask for a recount, but here’s the rub: he has to wait almost three weeks until the results are certified. It’s hard to imagine a recount can reverse Webb’s lead, so Allen and GOPers generally have to decide if they really want weeks of derisive commentary about their stance on recounts in Florida six years ago, when it’s unlikely the delay will do them any good.The other irony, of course, is that Democratic control of the Senate now depends on Joe Lieberman. Nobody has any reason to think he won’t do what he promised and caucus with Democrats, but there may be a little bit of uncomfortable crow-eating among those who have spent months arguing that Lieberman’s not a Democrat anymore, and should be stripped of his seniority.

I’m about to try and get a couple of hours of sleep, but the most interesting electoral story at 3:30 a.m. EST is whether the skin-tight Webb-Allen race in VA will wind up deciding control of the US Senate. If Jon Tester hangs on to his lead in MT, it will indeed all come down to VA. Jim Webb’s current 7,000 vote lead gives George Allen a statutory right to a recount. And as we know from 2000, all hell could break loose at that point. Tomorrow’s not too soon for Democrats to get lawyered up for a sustained battle over VA. Republicans will certainly initiate it, and this time, it would be nice if Democrats figured out how to simultaneously win in court, and in the court of public opinion.

Well, my suggestion that this would be an early night for political junkies was obviously wrong. A combination of close races, slow counts (caused largely by high turnouts) and very cautious media “calls,” has made this election a real nail-biter.At this point, the net Democratic gain in House seats stands at 25, and climbing.In the Senate, we’ve won three seats so far. Tennessee is gone; Virginia (where Jim Webb leads by about two thousand votes with a handful of scattered Democratic and Republican precincts still out) is going into Recount Land; Claire McKaskill has taken a late narrow lead in MO, and Jon Tester has a steady but still early lead in MT.We’ve won 6 net governorships so far; the only real disappointment has been in RI, which was excrutiatingly close.And further down ballot, we’ve won control of a number of state legislative chambers: both Houses in IA (where Dems pulled off the trifecta of holding the governorship and flipping both the state legislature and the congressional delegation), the IN House, the MN Senate, the NH Senate, and the MI House.It’s taken a while to develop, but this is a good late night for Donkeys, with the possibility of getting better by Dawn’s early light.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey