White House photo/<a href="hhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/4291192735/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Pete Souza</a> (<a href="http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml">Government Work</a>).
Early on, there were signs it was going to be a rough night for Democrats. Members of the House who had been expected to survive, like Virginia’s Rick Boucher, lost early. So did more vulnerable Reps. like Florida’s Alan Grayson, Virginia’s Tom Perriello, and Indiana’s Baron Hill. By 11 p.m., when Sen. Russ Feingold went down in Wisconsin, the Senate was looking pretty bleak, too. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Alexi Giannoulias in Illinois, who had both held early leads, were declared losers around midnight. Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland also lost around the same time. Gubernatorial races in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania weren’t nearly as close—and those defeats, combined with Dem losses in state legislative races, will give the GOP full control over congressional redistricting in most of the battleground Great Lakes states.
There were some bright spots for Dems—Harry Reid won in Nevada, as did Barbara Boxer in California. But the real questions for Wednesday are for President Barack Obama. What will he do now? How will he respond to the Dems’ defeat? David Corn has more on that here: Obama’s Next Act.
