Where Democrats remained strong, and why there's a lot of room for optimism.

West Coast.

For all the money Republicans and their conservative cohorts spent, they had a net gain of two Representatives, between Nevada, Washington, California, Oregon and Hawaii.  They did not gain an inch in Oregon, and outside groups poured millions of dollars into Oregon's governor's race, in a losing effort.

In Hawaii, conservative outside groups and the Republican Party tried to spend millions to hold onto Charles Djou's seat after he won it in a 3-way race with two Democrats; Djou lost -- by 6.5 percentage points.

In fact, Hawaii Democrats took back the Governor's spot from Linda Lingle, when popular Neil Abercrombie won by a landslide 17 percentage points.  Nearly the same thing happened in California, where Democrat Jerry Brown defeated Meg Whitman by 12 percentage points to turn the Governor's seat blue.

Sarah Palin?  She's .500 on her endorsements.  Of the 64 she originally endorsed, only 32 survived and won.  I call that about as good as flipping a coin.  The Tea Party is a bunch of hooey that the media cooked up to promote as a foil to Democrats, because Republicans, for goodness sakes, aren't really for anything but populist anger.

The gooey middle that couldn't make up its mind whether Republicans or Democrats could solve the economic crisis, has decided that they're keen on the Republican pledge to bring the nation back to 2008.  Can't wait to see what John Boehner comes up with, for his first budget.  Remember folks, Republicans promised to cut the budget 22% back to 2008 levels.