But anyway, if you allow the other pundits to tell it, you'd initially think the Republicans lost both houses of Congress and the presidency.  However, these were all state elections, and didn't have anything to do with the people's like or dislike for the president or Congress.  They'll have their chance to voice their frustration next year.

To claim that Schwarzenegger lost on his initiatives battle and the governorships in New Jersey and Virginia show how dissatisfied America is with the GOP is stretching things a bit much.  Both governors races currently have Democrats sitting in them, as New Jersey state politics has always been dominated by Democrats and Virginia had a pretty popular Democratic governor that will step down due to term limits this year.  Corzine is stepping down as a U.S. Senator to take the governor's office.  Those were high profile races, especially since those were the only two taking the national stage this year.  It's more of a testament about what kind of campaign they ran than it is a referendum on national politics.

And both campaigns were quite dirty.  Doug Forrester, who ran on the GOP ticket in NJ, decided he would dab into Corzine's private life by featuring his ex-wife in a television ad, saying he let his family down, and thus he would let New Jersey down as well.  She also made accused Corzine of making deals with county officials across the state in order to get their support when he ran for senator.  There is no other way to spin it; Forrester should have never allowed Corzine's ex-wife to get involved nor should he have tried to open up Corzine's private life for the state to see.  It only compounded things when Forrester promised not to use her in the campaign a day before the ad started to run. 

Kilgore ran a comparatively negative campaign, in which he mostly criticized Kaine and the Democratic leadership, and never highlighted any other topics than illegal immigration and the death penalty.  Most of the comments about the Virginia race that I've seen has noted that it was one of the nastiest races in Virginia history.

Democrats are particularly proud of the Kaine win, as it is in a state Bush won in both 2000 and 2004.  But there's a problem with that as well.  For example, I live in North Carolina.  In 2004, Bush took North Carolina relatively easy, and that's with the Democrats' Vice Presidential candidate being a senator from NC.  Also, Gov. Mike Easley won reelection so easily that he could have slept through the whole campaign and won it, due to the terrible candidate the Republicans nominated.  National politics is one thing, but state politics is a whole different breed of animal. 

While Kaine won, what Democrats or the media won't tell you is that a Republican won the Lt. Governor's race.  Thus, it wasn't as if the Democrats swept anything.

As for Schwarzenegger, I would have a "Come to Jesus" meeting with his political analysts, if I were him, and would probably get rid of a few of them.  Everything about this yelled "BAD IDEA" from the start. 

The whole idea of running another special election, when there were numbers of voters still weary of the last one, was dumb and contradictory.  Schwarzenegger claimed he wanted to curb state spending, but then wastes millions of dollars on an election which was guaranteed to have a low turnout.  I understood these propositions were important, but those should have been on the agenda in 2004 or 2006, not 2005. 

Considering the L.A. Times did everything they could to try to defeat Schwarzenegger when he ran during the recall election, and is still smarting from the criticism it received for it's coverage of that election from readers and pundits alike, was there any doubt they would report that this was the costliest special election in California history every time they got a chance?  Schwarzenegger played right into their hands, as well as the other newspapers on the Left Coast.

That wasn't the only contradictory issue, as on one hand Schwarzenegger wanted to curb spending and government power (spending cap, redistricting) and on the other hand wanted to strengthen it.  First, two initiatives on the ballot would have allowed prescription drug plans that pigeonholed drug companies into paying the rates the state wanted them to.  Second, an initiative would have placed even stricter regulation on electric providers, and would have made it harder for customers to change electric providers. 

Yeah; great way to communicate to the public: "Vote for this proposition so we can take more options away from you and keep you from choosing the most affordable electric provider possible".  Was it a mere coincidence that this proposition lost by the greatest margin?  Didn't think so.