Beware Overconfidence, GOP

President's miscalculations include scale, momentum

(NEWSER) - Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts is the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s first-year political strategy, John F. Harris and Carol E. Lee write for Politico . The miscalculations cover “three major counts":

• Believing 2008 was a game-changer: The Obama team thought the "election represented something seismic." But "the assumption that Obama would be swimming mostly with the current rather than often against it on issues such as health care, financial regulation and global warming was naive in retrospect."

Supermajority is gone, sure, but so is entire Democratic strategy

(NEWSER) - “While the sun will still come out on Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill” now that Republican Scott Brown has won Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, Ron Elving writes on NPR , “the political globe will have a new tilt.” Here, six things that have changed:

• The supermajority: That's history.
• Obama's agenda: Everything was predicated on stretching that supermajority to the "max." Goodbye tough climate change bill, financial regulation, immigration reform.

The Tea Party really made things interesting this year

(NEWSER) - From a January special election right up to the unexpectedly-productive lame duck Congress that just finished, 2010 was an incredible year in politics. Here's the rundown of Politico's top moments:

• Jan. 9, Scott Brown surges—The Republican took the lead in polls, sending uneasy Democrats into full-fledged panic mode. Just 11 days later, Brown did the unthinkable: Pulled Ted Kennedy's Senate seat into the GOP column (and touted his daughters' availability on national television).

Linda Hirshman: White women aren't excited about midterms

(NEWSER) - White women aren’t particularly excited about the 2010 midterms. In a recent Gallup poll, a paltry 27% of them expressed excitement about the upcoming election. Gallup’s explanation for this was simple: Men are more likely to be Republican, and Republicans are more enthusiastic this year. But Linda Hirshman has another explanation: “Remember the PUMAs?” she writes in the Daily Beast . “I wonder if we declared them an endangered species too soon.” More»

Tea Party hero lends support to former running mate

(NEWSER) - Sarah Palin spoke at a rally for John McCain today in Tucson, the first time the two have stumped together since the 2008 presidential campaign. McCain is in a tight primary fight with JD Hayworth, who is attempting to paint the senator as insufficiently conservative. Palin delivered some much-needed Tea Party cred: McCain, she said has been "leading the fight against reckless spending for decades." More»