NOW HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE FOR THE CANDIDATES TO REMOVE THEIR CAMPAIGN SIGNS?

Some reflections on Tuesday's general election:

1) Giving credit where credit is due, one has to admire the Republican Party's Get Out the Vote campaign. While many believed that the significantly higher than projected turnout numbers should have helped the Democratic candidates, it didn't.

2) If there is anything that Democrats can celebrate, it is the limited gains made. We will have one voice in the Florida Cabinet with the election of Alex Sink as Chief Financial Officer, and here in Polk County we will have a voice on the County Commission for the first time in nearly a decade with Jean Reed. Small steps, indeed, but any gains are good.

One note about Ms. Reed's campaign: She won with a very lean campaign budget. While Parker raised $103,700, Reed only raised $32,096

3) Looking at the national scene for a moment, Democrats should not rejoice too much at regaining control of the House of Representatives. While that means gaining chairmanships of committees and supoena powers to look at a variety of Republican mess-ups, a number of those soon-to-be freshman Democratic representatives are conservative. On a number of issues that could prove to be a thorn in the side of the more liberal members of the new House leadership.

I'll probably have more later in the day.