Thank God it's over.

I can't say I ever thought Jim Webb was a terribly qualified Senatorial candidate, but I like the idea of a conservative Democrat representing me a lot more than the idea of a conservative Republican representing me, so I'm cautiously optimistic about the Virginia Senate result. I definitely don't fall under the category of blogs calling him The Messiah, though.

It appears that raising the minimum wage will be one of the first tasks of the Democrat-majority Congress, which is fine with me (it doesn't affect me one way or another). I keep hearing that raising the minimum wage will hurt small businesses, but I tend to think that if a small business can't afford to pay someone another $2 an hour, they should declare themselves a failure and go get a job at a real business.

I'm puzzled about why Bush waited until after the election to fire Rumsfeld. I would have thought getting rid of him before the election would help Republicans, because it would have shown the voters that they don't need to elect Democrats to change course in Iraq. (I doubt if firing Rumsfeld will have much of an impact on Iraq, though.)

Thomas Krehbiel writes The Krehbiel Strikes Back, a moderate commentary on news, media, politics, and culture.