Picking a network on which to watch the election coverage is a little like picking a candidate. Which one is the least offensive? I held my nose and turned on CNN this afternoon at 4:00, which is when the first of the eastern polls closed. Fox News wears its rightwing bias proudly, and MSNBC is trying to pander to the same crowd, so until the national broadcast networks started to weigh in, I didn’t feel I had much of a choice.

CNN seemed to be trying to provide some balance to the coverage, but I could only wish some of their commentators would stop (a) telling me things I already knew, and (2) saying the same things over and over. It was nice of them to dress the Republican pundits in red neckties and the Democrats in blue ones. That made it easier to know where they were coming from.

Ultimately it was the numbers that counted. The Democrats rather easily took control of the House of Representatives, as expected. It was the first congressional election in U.S. history where not a single Democratic seat was won by a Republican. And as I go to bed at the end of this long, long night, the Democrats need three more victories to take control of the Senate, and they have small leads in the last three states still in play. (For the record, those would be Virginia, Montana and Missouri.)

In fact, that’s pretty much the reason I’m going to bed now. I’m quitting while I’m ahead.

The nature of the Congress under Democratic control remains to be seen, because a large number of the new House members are not traditional liberal Democrats. They are the neo-Dems that those who consider themselves practical politicians hope will take the party to victory in the 2008 presidential race. It will be interesting to see how they govern, to the extent that they can, between now and then.