Whom shall we name this award after?

Dangling prepositions be damned. In Andrew Sullivan style, I think we're going to need an award for this here. It's an election analysis in the serious right-wing (by Dutch standards) NRC Handelsblad paper. Under the headline "George Bush is Finally Elected," their US correspondent Marc Chavannes starts off by saying that Bush finally got elected with a real majority, pointing out that he only won because of the Supreme Court ruling in 2000 and had half a million fewer votes than Al Gore. The analysis then goes on to explain how the Republicans will now be in charge of the committees in the Senate, and how that will help Bush. Then analysis really goes off the deep end. He claims it could be a pyrrhic victory, because he spent so much time fighting against moderate Democrats like Carnahan (MO), Cleland (GA) and Johnson (SD). These are the Democrats Bush could do business with, he goes on, and by alienating that kind of Democrat he risks provoking a harder and more coherent Democratic opposition. I suppose neo-Marxist class warfare Gore-style probably is harder and more coherent. It's also a vote loser, but that seems not to register.

The truly amazing part comes at the end. I'll translate it for you.

But for another reason it's only the question whether this victory is as remarkable as is claimed. The most often heard reaction in the American media last night was that the Republican victory was unique because the president's party usually loses. This was the second time in one hundred years that this happened. [sic]. In 1998 the Democrats pulled it off.

According to Nelson Polsby, the veteran Congress-watcher and professor of political science at Berkeley University this analysis is incorrect. "Who won the 2000 elections?" he asks rhetorically. "Exactly, the Democrat Al Gore. His party lost slightly this year. It's the normal setback for the party that really gave it its all last time around." In this reading of the results of mid-term elections the historical trend has not been broken at all."

It is of course well known that Berkeley University professors are well-grounded in reality, so they make the ideal commentators on election results. Living in the alternate reality of planet Zog where Al Gore did actually the 2000 election, Polsby embarks on his fantasy quest to present today's result as another Democratic triumph. Two consecutive election cycle defeats for the Democrats suddenly become two victories. Really, how pathetic is that? And why is it that only professors at elite universities are capable of NOT seeing the blindingly obvious? Is it something in the water? A secret medical procedure they carry out?

Zaphod Beeblebrox had glasses that turned automatically black whenever there was danger, so as not to alarm him by not allowing him to see the source of the danger. Somebody's been passing these things around at Berkeley and our other elite instutions of Moral and Intellectual Blinkering.