Reading the tea leafs

Yesterday was a huge day politically. The headlines were Specter losing in Pennsylvania and Rand Paul winning in Kentucky. In both cases the establishment-backed candidates lost. After his attack on Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings I would have hard time being a good Democrat and voting for him (assuming, of course, that I lived in Pennsylvania). The tea partiers helped libertarian Rand Paul crush his opponent in Kentucky. Kentucky is very Republican so the odds are not good for my party but Paul is pretty much a nut-case like his father.

I wonder what Chuck Grassley thought last night. He saw his friend Arlen Specter lose and he saw a future Republican colleague (Paul) win. At one time Grassley was considered a solid conservative but compared to Paul he's a flaming liberal. That has to make Chuck a wee-bit uncomfortable.

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The best news for Democrats was the special election in Pennsylvania. McCain won the district. It looked ripe for the Republicans to pick it off. Make no mistake, this is going to be a bad year for my party... but I've grown sick of the hysterics on my side (and the premature gloating on the other side).

2010 is not 1994. And Obama is not Clinton.