A Very Good Article in the Washington Post Written by John Fortier of the American Enterprise Institute.

Wonders will never cease. The article notes that the principle intra party shift due to the November 7 election is that there is now only one Republican reprentative representing New England and that New York is so dominated by the Democrats that "After Tuesday, if you get into a car in Manhattan and drive north out of the city, you would have to go nearly 200 miles until you reached territory represented by Republicans."

Fortier looks at districts by Presidential vote "Before Tuesday's elections there were eighteen House Republicans who represented districts that John Kerry had won in 2004. Ten of those eighteen lost." and looks at ideology "Among the House seats that changed hands, nine out of the twenty most liberal House Republicans lost, using the rankings of political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal (voteview.com). And nineteen seats that changed hands had been held by Republicans in the more liberal half of their caucus."

The article is substantive and to the point. It shows the utter idiocy of the more recent of these two magazine covers. The center is definitely not the place to be.

All in all, this one article in the Washington Post reaches the level one would expect of a much more serious news source such as www.washingtonmonthly.com

To me, the amazing thing is that I am amazed. I really think that the article by John Fortier is the exception that proves the rule. I really honestly don't know why there are so few articles like this one in daily newspapers. It is by no means too technical for Washington Post readers and contains much more information than, say, an average weeks worth of op eds. Also, since the claims are supported by data (indeed they simply summarize data) they are, for what they are worth, definitely true. Most analyses of the elections do not come close to this standard.

Why not ? What is the problem ?

And as for Joe Klein, why doesn't he stick to fiction ... uhm let me rephrase that, why is his fiction published in a news magazine ?

update: Real Clear Politics jumps the shark

via Kos

Jay Cost writes "This is the Democrats' major limitation this year. They just have relatively few Republican-held districts, about 15, where Kerry beat Bush in 2004."

recall "Before Tuesday's elections there were eighteen House Republicans who represented districts that John Kerry had won in 2004." Now 18 is, indeed, about 15, but why couldn't Cost have done the calculation ? Too much work ? It would take me a while, but he should know where to get the info in a minute.

update 2: My mistake. It would take me about a minute too.
Here is presidential vote by district
via Wikipedia via my very first google search (also first link on which I clicked after googling).

Elapsed time around one minute.

Maybe the problem is the Cost (polidata wants money). Also the House makes me look up members by district clicking on states one by one. Sooo much work maybe it would be quicker to google and it would certainly be quicker to just pull a number out of my hat.