Wednesday-morning quarterbacking

For New Hampshire residents, the most shocking fact in yesterday’s election results is the Democratic takeover of the Legislature. It was so unexpected that while there was idle speculation about about which Democrat might become president of the state Senate should the Democrats squeak into a majority there, the thought of a Democrat as House speaker never crossed anyone’s mind.

How did such a thing happen? Here are my thoughts:

• George Bush. People finally became fed up with the gap between what the president was saying about Iraq and what was actually happening there. The Pinocchio factor, as the pundits call it (although, to be charitable, Bush's problem could be self-delusion rather than lying). I’ll be interested to see how many people voted a straight Democratic ticket, punishing the Republican Party for Bush’s failed war.

• Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley. They helped the Democrats by not budging from the president’s side on the Iraq war. As the chaos and the carnage escalated in Iraq in October, they stuck to their story. This gave voters a closeup of the weird disconnect between Washington Republicans and Baghdad. Coincidentally, it finished Bass and Bradley.

•  John Lynch. The governor inoculated his party against the tax-and-spend label that has forever been flypaper for New Hampshire Democrats. At every opportunity he publicly identifies with exactly what most voters think. People don’t care about party labels, he says. They just want us politicians to solve the problems. And he looks like such a Boy Scout when he says it.

• The Republican Party. Poor leadership, no organizing principle, tired sloganeering, a cipher at the top of the ticket. Astonishingly, the New Hampshire GOP juggernaut simply disappeared in 2006. Who are the party’s leaders? What does the party stand for? Darned if I know, and darned if I ever thought that question would even occur to me.

• The Democratic Party. Democrats fielded strong state legislative candidates – and, it turned out, two competitive U.S. House candidates. With strength at the top of the ticket, the party spent lots of money. Its Senate candidates in particular pounded on doors. Lynch gave them cover on the income tax (cover that may feel more like a chastity belt once they meet in January, but that is a subject for another day). The Democrats won because they put up a credible slate and projected unity at least on what, if elected, they would not do.

A final thought: These jottings constitute Wednesday-morning quarterbacking that cannot explain the inexplicable. How does Kathy Sgambati, a terrific, hardworking candidate but also a first-time candidate, beat a Republican legislator in the Republican city where he was a popular football coach for three decades? How does Dave Currier go down in Henniker? Stretch Kennedy in Hopkinton? Peter Spaulding?

One reaches for clichés to label such things. “The perfect storm,” defeated U.S. Rep. Jeb Bradley called it last night. Indeed.