Read 'Em And Weep

Bush wins, Gore loses. Politically, both sides now begin playing a new hand. However you shuffle and deal it, it's advantage Republicans.

As for Democrats and the final election headlines, it's as they sometimes say about cards at the end of poker games: read 'em and weep.

The Republicans now control the White House, the Senate (with Vice President-elect Cheney soon to be the tie-breaking vote) and the House of Representatives, and they have a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The value of this last majority has just been amply demonstrated. Seven of the nine present justices, including Chief Justice Rehnquist, were appointed by Republicans. Five of those seven - enough to fashion 5-4 decisions on key court votes - are by any reasonable analysis rock-ribbed conservatives.

For Democrats, things on the court are destined to get worse, not better - and soon. President-elect Bush figures to get two, probably three new Supreme Court appointments, and will likely name the next Chief Justice. Bush already has said that Justice Antonin Scalia, the hardest rock among the court’s rock-hard Republican core, is his idea of an ideal justice. That doesn't mean Scalia will get the call from Bush to be chief, but it does mean he has a good shot at it. And if not Scalia, then someone very nearly like him.

Here's the reality for Democrats, whether they choose to accept it or not: This is now, in many important ways, a Republican country, in terms of power. Never mind all of the Democrats' brave talk that the country was split right down the middle in this last election. Statistically, that's true, but in the end, at key levers of power, the Republicans come out with more than the Democrats, beginning with the presidency itself.

Gore found out the hard way just how Republican the country as a whole has turned over the past quarter century. When all the big chips were on the table, when Gore absolutely, positively needed help, this is what he was up against: a Republican governor in Florida, who was also the brother of his opponent, and a state legislature dominated in both houses by heavy GOP majorities.

True, the Florida Supreme Court was Democratic and Gore got a big hand from them, but they were trumped by the U.S. Supreme Court's heavy Republican majority - not once but twice. And backing up the U.S. Supreme Court, just in case it came to that, were the Republicans' congressional majorities in Washington.

Fighting from behind against this array of power, Gore was what the Mafia calls "a walking corpse" in his contest of the Florida results. He was dead before he knew it.

Given the hard facts of who now controls what, those Democrats who are now saying things like "Well, we'll eat 'em alive in the 2002 congressional elections and then again in 2004," may be in for rude shocks.

With Bush as president, the already formidable Republican money-raising machinery will gin like never before. Perhaps more importantly, cenrist Republican oratory of the sort Bush has mastered will knock much of the hard rightist edges off some in his party, giving the GOP a better chance at winning over moderate independent voters. Plus, enough nervous Democrats in both houses of Congress may give Bush more of a working majority on Capitol Hill than some Democrats and pundits now imagine.

None of this is to say that Bush and the Republicans are in for an easy ride. They aren't. It is to say that the election results are in and, let us remind ourselves, the Republicans did better than the Democrats. And given past Republican election victories, national and state, the GOP is stronger, much stronger, just now than their opponents.

Democrats don't like it. But the cards don't lie. Unless the Democrats regroup and engage in innovative fresh thinking pronto, and maybe even if they do, they'll just have to read 'em and weep.