Tom Daschle, the outgoing Senate majority leader, has joined Mr. Lautenberg in declaring that the economy is a mess, but once again, doesn't say what it is that needs to be done, other than to give more money to people who don't have it. The negative formulation of that is even more attractive: It is to take money away from those who have it. There is special satisfaction to be got from doing that, as Marie Antoinette learned.
But these are stray observations of the morning after. The figures are not absolutely in on whether more people actually voted Republican than Democatic, so we don't know whether the special services of a Katherine Harris will be needed -- she solved that problem in Florida two years ago when the Democrats managed, on a sleepy day, to outnumber the Republicans. But this time, in edgy contests, the Republican vote was pretty assertively loyal.
Florida had loomed as the great battleground between the two parties. Jeb Bush was the underdog as the manifestly younger brother of the president. And his opponent threatened to undo all the initiatives Gov. Bush had taken to attempt to do something about education, beyond merely limiting class size. Everybody who was anybody in politics descended on that scene and wooed the electorate, who very early on in the evening backed Bush.
One morning television interviewer asked the governor whether his daughter's misbegotten drug habits had injured him, and the thought passed that perhaps there was a backlash vote, people who thought the publicity given to the daughter's drug problem merited a backlash, to the effect that her young misfortunes were not to be taken as the fault of Gov. Jeb.
And there seemed to be a backlash in Minnesota, where the majority of the voters did not interpret the tragic death of Paul Wellstone as commanding them to endorse the cause of socialism and isolationism. In California, Republican candidate William Simon made an extraordinary showing in a Democratic state in which the incumbent governor spent more than $50 million to win by a measly five points.
But big spending didn't always pay off. In New York, gubernatorial candidate Tom Golisano spent his $50 million, proving absolutely nothing. A great relief is experienced by thousands of analysts whose fax machines were clogged with Golisano matter 15 times a day for two months, which reminds us that the end of campaigns produces a wonderful calm, even if only for a little while, especially enjoyable when the sense is that the storm has gone well out to sea.