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Moderation sweeps the Senate
By Bruce Morton/CNN
Well, it wasn't a sea change or anything. I do remember Joseph Lieberman, at a fund-raiser in Nevada a week or so ago, saying he could even imagine a scenario in which his Democrats gained a Senate seat. As the returns kept coming in, that didn't seem nearly as eccentric as when he'd said it.
Is there a great theme? Not exactly. One lesson is that people are fairly happy with their lives just now and don't want government to rock the boat. So it was a good election for incumbents; only three lost their seats: Al D'Amato of New York and Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina lost Republican seats; Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois lost her Democratic seat, and there were good local reasons for all those outcomes.
If the economy and voter contentment were what it was mostly about, Bill and Monica and Judge Starr were what it mostly wasn't about. Washington pundits will, of course, read impeachment into these returns somehow. These days they probably analyze football games that way too.
But in the six or seven or whatever it was states I was in, I heard one -- count her -- one voter raise the subject, and the congressman she was questioning promptly changed the subject.
The Senate vote may have been pro-moderate. Hard-line social conservatives didn't do very well. GOP challengers Bob Inglis in South Carolina, Mark Neumann in Wisconsin and incumbent Faircloth all lost. Peter Fitzgerald, a conservative, beat Moseley-Braun, but he had repackaged himself as a moderate on issues like gun control.
So, moderation; the economy, stupid; and contented voters. And a message on impeachment? Nah. Never happened.
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