The Dish

"You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time," – Abraham Lincoln, my kind of Republican.

Bellow Falls, Vermont, 6.30 am.

This election doesn’t mean America has given up on the war in Iraq. It means, at a minimum, that the president must be forced to realize he cannot keep his defense secretary. If this election was a referendum on the war and its execution, the will of the people is clear. No one can have confidence in Rumsfeld as defense secretary at this point. He has to go. I know the president said he’d keep him for two more years regardless. (It was one of the dumbest things he has ever said.) But any president wishing to form a sustainable middle ground on Iraq now has to abandon Rumsfeld. It’s that simple. Fire him; and reach out to the Democrats and moderate Republicans in order to form a strategy for victory or stability in Iraq. And have the good sense to be graceful about it.

(Photo: Haraz Ghanbari/AFP/Getty.)

The House of Representatives has now become a key check on an out-of-control executive. It reflects a big shift in the minds and souls of Americans. The Senate is still unclear – but the Dems have made gains, clearly. The founders knew what they were doing. The country wants to go back to the center, to have a sane, reality-based debate about what to do in Iraq, how to rescue the looming fiscal catastrophe, and how to defeat Islamo-fascism and how to detain and interrogate terror suspects. So we have a re-balancing. I think we know enough now for this:

Here’s some new data:

Young voter turnout in a set of targeted precincts increased by an average of 50 percent over the 2002 election, and by as much as 111 percent in some precincts, according to an Election Night analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), continuing a national trend of growing young voter participation that began in the 2004 election.

"Based on numbers provided to us by the New Voters Project, it appears that in selected Ohio precincts with high concentrations of college students, the turnout increase was very substantial compared to 2002. Overall, the number of votes cast in those precincts increased by about 50 percent, ranging from 6% to 111% in specific precincts," said Peter Levine, Director of CIRCLE.

It’s looking more likely.

Three reader comments on Santorum’s defeat:

In his concession speech, the first thing he wanted to say was that he "thanks God". So do we, Rick, so do we!

Then this from "a proud central Pennsylvanian":

Man, Santorum looks like he really needs some meth to throw away.

And this:

As much as I loathe Rick Santorum’s positions, it is heartbreaking to watch his teenage son cry behind him during the concession speech.

Fascinating exit poll data:

Almost a third of white evangelicals voted for Democrats in today’s election, according to early exit polls reported by The Associated Press. Most of them cited corruption as an important factor in their decision.

That’s a change from the 2004 presidential election when 78 percent of white evangelicals voted for Bush and 21 percent voted for Kerry. That was a recent peak in evangelical attachment to Republicans.

In the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, evangelicals constituted 23 percent of the electorate.

Today’s early numbers seem to show that Democrats have been able to recapture some of that huge block.

Two people finally coming out of denial. Here’s Kathryn-Jean Lopez. Question for K-Lo who insisted that Santorum was headed for victory. Did you really believe that or were you pretending to believe it in order to help Santorum win? Are you nuts or just a partisan fanatic? I don’t see a third option. Here’s Faith Hill, channeling K-Lo:

(Photo of defeated Christianist candidate, Rick Santorum, by Carolyn Kaster for Time.)