Winners and Losers

The midterm elections gave us some pretty clear winners and losers.

Here are the folks whose political power and ambitions got a boost on Tuesday:

Hillary Clinton - The front-runner for 2008 was re-elected in a landslide.
Barak Obama - Has seen his status go way up after campaigning on behalf of lots of winning candidates.
Nancy Pelosi - Speaker Pelosi
Harry Reid - Majority Leader
Edward Kennedy - Chairman Kennedy
Charlie Rangel - Ways and Means Chairman
Barnie Franks - Financial Services Chairman
Henry Waxman - Government Reform Chairman
John Conyers - Judiciary Chairman
Eliot Spitzer - Blowout win for Gov. of New York; Setting his sights on 2112.
Charles Schumer - Led the Democrats to regain the Senate
Rahm Emanuel - Led the Democrats to regain the House
Steny Hoyer - Majority Leader
John Murtha - Majority Whip
Joe Lieberman - Back from the dead
Bernie Sanders - The world’s most powerful Socialist.
Sherrod Brown and, of course, all other the new Democratic Senators and Representatives.

The losers were pretty easy to pick out as well:

George W. Bush - Lame Duck with 34 percent approval rating.
Donald Rumsfeld - Out on his rear and soon to be subpoened.
Karl Rove - Not the genius everyone thought he was.
Dennis Hastert - Guess he doesn’t have to resign now. The voters did it for him.
Bill Frist - So much for his presidential aspirations.
George Allen - Ditto
Rick Santorum - Double ditto.
Conrad Burns - Scandal-tarred loser.
Mike DeWine - Loser.
Jim Talent - KO’ed by Michael J. Fox.
Lincoln Chafee - Missed his chance to switch parties. Bye bye.
And all the other Republican losers on election day.

But there were a few Republicans whose political fortunes actually improved on Tuesday:

John McCain - So many Repubicans’ presidential aspirations were wiped out (George Allen, Bill Frist) that it practically left McCain as the only viable GOP contender for 2008.
Arnold Schwarzenegger - Bounced back from a disasterous year by moving left.
Charlie Crist - The new governor of Florida ran the other way when Bush came to campaign for him and managed to weather the Democratic onslaught.
Trent Lott - Now has a clear shot at regaining the leadership job he lost when he praised Strom Thurmond’s segregationist ways a couple of years ago.
John Boehner - He finally got Denny Hastert out of the way and has a clear shot at being the next Minority Leader.
Christopher Shays - Is guaranteed to be the leader of the Republican’s New England caucus in the House.