It may turn out that Obama's October surprise was doing a particularly poor job on the first debate - surprising his own party as well as the Republicans.
Win, lose (or draw?) the presidential race will be over in less than a month. Over, that is, unless we have a "Florida hanging chad" experience again - unlikely.
We will have reconfigured the U.S. Senate too, for better or worse. The likelihood is that we''ll have a narrow GOP majority, nothing like enough to override the 60 vote/filibuster barrier. Seeing less of Harry Reid would be pleasant.
Numbers in the House of Representatives will change too, but no serious analyst suggests the Republican majority will go away. Nancy Pelosi is much more bearable as House Minority Leader, where "bearable" = "largely invisible."
The next great political milestone will be whether or not we fall off the fiscal cliff on January 1. Odds are against it, but gridlock is hard to break.
