[bumped - Barbara Morrill]

I've got to say, I expected to be torn up if we didn't get to three seats. I expected to suffer through yet another bout of electoral depression, bummed at coming up short yet again. And wecome up short!

Short of what? Short of taking the Wisconsin Senate? Sure. That would've been nice.

But let me just say, if tonight was a loss, I hope we have many more such "losses" in 2012.

We took the fight into red territory, and took two seats. What was a safe 19-14 GOP advantage is now a narrow 17-16. If we had those numbers going into 2011, the anti-labor bill would never have passed—one GOPer voted with the Democrats (and hey, Sen. Dale Schultz, the water is mighty fine on our side of the aisle!).

The execrable Randy Hopper is gone. He can cry in his 20-something-year-old mistress's arms tonight. And Kapanke too. It sucks being unemployed in Wisconsin these days. Maybe they can get a non-union job at McDonald's.

Beyond Wisconsin, if we can enjoy a similar "loss rate" in Republican-held districts (picking up 33 percent of them), Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have a huge majority in 2013. We had a message that resonated with large numbers of working people in overwhelmingly white working-class districts that shifted hard against Democrats in 2010. GOP overreach is winning them back for us. Just think, before today, only 13 state legislators had been recalled in the entire history of this nation.

So yeah, I feel strangely energized and elated.

It's going to be a long year, and tens of millions of dollars of Koch money (in addition to hundreds of millions more from Rove and allies) are going to force us to fight like hell for every inch of territory. They won't cede it willingly or fairly. They'll do their best to cheat or buy whenever they feel they can't win fairly.

That's our challenge. I, for one, am ready for it.