I am back at my desk after a relatively long needed break. Part of the break was because of a virus I picked up, probably on my airplane travels internationally. The best part of the break was going to Colorado to ski with my children and grandchildren. When you are at the top of the mountain and look at snow covered peaks in the distance it is like God painted a picture postcard for you. We all face, and will continue to face, significant economic, personal and family problems. It is just part of life, but being in the mountains and away from the daily political and business traumas experienced in 2008 allows you to keep your perspective and renew your faith.

In retrospect, the Republicans were the victims of the perfect storm. Part of it was their own doing, especially the Bush presidency. Part of it was the economy, and part of it was a near perfect campaign run by a charismatic young Senator. The Democrats increased their margin in the House to 257 Members (218 is a majority). In the Senate they have 58 seats if you include Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman and Vermont’s Bernard Sanders. The race in Minnesota appears to be going to Democrat Al Franken, but lawsuits may delay any final count for some time.

When I was in Congress a great many of the Democratic Members in both the House and the Senate were from the South. When Clinton was elected in 1992, about a quarter of all Senate Democrats and a third of all House Democrats were from the South. They were not only large in numbers, but most had been there a long time, and thus because of seniority rules, were Committee Chairmen. For instance, Mahan of Texas was Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Teague of Texas was Chairman of the Space Committee, Pogue of Texas was Chairman of Agriculture, etc. Even though after Watergate there were under 150 Republican Representatives, there were enough “Southern Democrats” to give us the ability to negotiate with the Democratic majority and also the ability to sustain a Presidential veto.

This counterbalance no longer exists. The Southern Democrats in the House are slowly losing their numbers. They are not in as bad shape as Republicans in the Northeast, where Christopher Shays from Connecticut, the lone-remaining Republican House Member, lost. Southern Democrats are ten percent of the Senate and less than twenty-five percent of the House. Furthermore, they don’t have the seniority that existed in the past. What this means is that Obama will have a lot more cohesive Congress to work with.

There is one hope and that is the Blue Dog Democrats, approximately fifty moderate to conservative House Democrats, can have an impact. They believe that fiscal responsibility is the key issue and could vote with the Republicans to hold down spending. It remains to be seen if they will be effective, or will be run over by the large Democrat majority in the House. We will get a quick look at how this plays out when the votes are counted on the incredibly large economic stimulus bill now proposed by Obama. My guess is this will go through by over 75 votes in the Senate and 241 votes in the House.

Rhodes Cook, the author of The Rhodes Cook Newsletter, has done his usual superb job of analyzing this election and I have used a lot of these statistics in this article (you can subscribe by writing to The Rhodes Cook Letter, P. O. Box 574, Annandale, VA 22003). Rhodes points out that Obama was in the middle of the presidential pack in his winning percentage. Cook defines a landslide victory as more than ten percentage points. Obama won the popular vote by 7.2% and in Cook’s language he was one of the twelve U.S. Presidents who won a clear-cut victory (5 to 9.9 percent). There were sixteen U.S. Presidents who won by less than five percentage points, such as Kennedy (1960), Nixon (1968) and George W. Bush (2000). Obama carried Florida by approximately 236,000 votes and won by a 51% to 48% margin over McCain.

There is some minor hope for the Republicans. In December, Republicans won the Senate runoff in Georgia and also a pair of House runoff wins in Louisiana. In the Senate race in Georgia, the large African-American, pro-Obama vote did not turn out. The same could be said of the two seats in Louisiana; Rep. William Jefferson had major ethics problems and the turn out for his race was 70,000 less voters than in the Presidential race.

Finally, one of the keys to Obama’s victory was the incredible Democratic voter registration drive. Obama won nine states in 2008 that had voted for George W. Bush four years earlier. For instance, in Florida the Democrats increased their registration 460,827, while the Republicans increased their registration only 171,809. This pattern was repeated throughout the Country with an estimated 1 million more Democrats registered in 2008 than in 2004.

Hopefully this will give you an idea how the Congress breaks out; how it acts is another issue and only time will tell.

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Lou Frey represented Central Florida in the U. S. Congress from 1969 to 1979. In his last election, he received nearly 80% of the vote. He was elected one of five Republican leaders in the House of Representatives during the 93rd and 94th Congress. He served on...