It seems to have happened...

But I'm still not completely convinced Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld, DeLay, Frist, Foley, Abramoff, Ney, Weldon, Sherwood, and for good measure, maybe Jesus, aren't going to jump out of their respective hiding places and yell, "SURPRISE!" because this last year has just been a big funny, and none of it really happened at all. Meaning come 2007, the GOP would still have control of Congress, Rummy would still have control of the military, and Hastert would still be third in line for the presidency.

Now that the results are in and the campaigns are over, I'll share with you some of my favorite moments:

• The National Republican Congressional Committee's ad about Michael Arcuri and the sex hotline. Click on the picture to the left to see it on YouTube. Personally, I'm impressed with the footage the NRCC found of Arturi lickin' his lips and making eyes at something in front of him. When Tim Russert asked NRCC chairman Tom Reynolds about it on Meet the Press last weekend, Reynolds' response was, "Politics isn't always fair."

• This graf from an article in Slate, which had some of the best writing throughout the entire campaign.

If there were an Oscar for political slime, it would go to "Twilight Zone," a spot run by Vernon Robinson, a congressional challenger in North Carolina. In 60 seconds, the ad manages to tie Democrat Brad Miller to Osama, gay marriage, "lesbians and feminists," activist judges, infanticide, flag-burning, racial quotas, space aliens, illegal immigrants, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. In another ad, Robinson stamps "XXX" across Miller's face, claiming that his opponent refused to support body armor for troops in Iraq but that he "pays for sex" and that he "spent your tax dollars to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia."

• Today's first press conference in which Bush announced that Rumsfeld would step down. Specifically, the following quotes:
--->The question was why did Bush say he intended to keep Rumsfeld on as long as he was president. The answer was...

Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was: You going to do something about Rumsfeld and the vice president? And my answer was, you know, they're going to stay on.
And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign.
And so the only way to answer that question and to get you onto another question was to give you that answer.

In other words, you... outright lied?

--->During a long-winded answer to the same question:

Actually, I thought we were going to do fine yesterday. Shows what I know.

• Republican incumbent Richard Pombo losing to Democrat McNerney in California's 11th District, AKA Tracy, home to the reddest group of H2-driving, environment-killing elephants I've ever lived among.

• Jim Ryun, who I love and respect when he's wearing running shoes but want to strangle when any words come out of his mouth, losing his bid for a seventh (?) term in Kansas' 2nd District.

• Ferguson's Stender-is-a-spender-and-a-double-dipping-pension-padder campaign ads. Personally, I think he should have kept with the rhyme scheme throughout, though. Maybe, "Stender is a spender, a double-dipping pension bender, and a mean and slutty big rear-ender." Sure, it doesn't make sense, but who needs to make sense when it's Rhyme Time? It also would have given me something interesting to write about the race, which then might have allowed my article to run in full in this other paper and not get cut off in a place that makes it look like I never bothered to address the double-dipping pension padder's side of things.

• This photo to the left, of Ned Lamont at the polls.

• And finally, in the end the reason for the extent of the Dems' win was Foley. Voters in Utah voted against the Republican because a congressman in Florida has a thing for teenage boys. Democrats made huge gains and defeated Republicans, often by significant margins, throughout the country.

Meanwhile, in Foley's 16th District, the Democrat barely won. Tim Mahoney got 49 percent of the vote while 48 percent went to Republican Joe Negron's, who joined the race barely five weeks ago.