Any election result that gives Tom DeLay cause for celebration--and, make no mistake, the 2004 election gave the dark prince of Congress plenty to celebrate--ought to send a sharp shiver through the American body politic. Indeed, as depressing as the presidential election results were, the news from House and Senate contests around the country was worse. Now--or at least for as long as he can keep ahead of his many legal and ethical challenges--DeLay will be the dominant figure in Congress.

House Republicans went into the 2004 election cycle with a 227-205 advantage over the Democrats; they're likely to finish it with a 233-199 advantage. That's not a big shift, but it does represent a dramatic victory for DeLay, the GOP majority leader, who redrew the political map of Texas in order to increase his grip on the House. Of five Democratic incumbents who had their districts drawn out from under them, four lost. Only Representative Chet Edwards, who in one of the nicer bits of electoral irony represents George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, won re-election. The one other bit of good news was that the Democratic incumbent whom DeLay really wanted to beat, progressive Lloyd Doggett, outsmarted the man they call The Hammer by moving into a new district and building a coalition of working-class Latinos and Austin-area liberals who gave him an easy win--and status as the Lone Star antithesis of DeLay.

A few other races also went against DeLay's plan. Georgia Democrat Cynthia McKinney fought her way back from a 2002 defeat and promises to be a welcome thorn in the side of both Republican and Democratic leaders. Colorado Democrat John Salazar, a rancher who ran on the all-but-forgotten theme that Republican policies are bad for rural America, won a GOP seat. The senior Republican in the House, Phil Crane of Illinois, got beaten by Democrat Melissa Bean, whose campaign focused on the need to protect the environment from the right-wing wrecking crew in Congress. Bean will join a number of new women in the House, including such progressives as Pennsylvania's Allyson Schwartz and Florida's Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both of whom emphasized the need for real healthcare reform.

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