Bush's tone in his speech last Wednesday was very somber, a marked and welcome change from his normal gratuitous self. This was no doubt brought on by the realization that he's lost his carte blanche and must now engage in actual diplomacy with the Democrats. Diplomacy is not one of his strong points. Suddenly, though, Bush was the most conciliatory person in the world, noting that the midterm election results showed that America was a strong democracy. (In private, though, he's probably cursing up a storm.)

Now that George Allen has conceded defeat, the Democrats are in control of both the House and the Senate. On Thursday, when Allen conceded, U.S. generals said that there would probably be a shift in our Iraq policy. No kidding! Here's a list of things that will also change:

• Democrats will replace Republicans as committee chairs. Most important legislative activity happens in committees, not on the Senate floor. It is in committees that legislation gets altered, modified, or totally tossed out. Stupid legislation like flag burning amendments and restrictions on cases what the Supreme Court can hear will be given the shoddy treatment they deserve.
  
  Commitee chairs have the power to issue subpoenas and require that witnesses testify under oath. For the last six years, important figures haven't been subpoenaed and witnesses haven't been under oath (cf. Ted Stevens and the oil company chairmen, whom he refused to put under oath, despite objections from other committee members). Committee chairs can also call for official hearings, which may happen with regard to oil companies, Halliburton, and the war in Iraq.
• John Bolton may be out as Ambassador to the United Nations. Bush, knowing that he may not have been able to get Bolton in as a regular appointee, snuck him in as a "recess appointment" while Congress was out to lunch. Once the 110th Congress comes into session in January, the Senate will have to confirm any Bush appointee. Since the Senate is composed of 51 Democrats (and 2 Independents who have said they'll vote with the Democrats), it's unlikely that Bolton would be confirmed. Bush will have to submit another, less divisive nominee.
• John Paul Stevens is now the oldest Supreme Court justice. If he decides to retire, the composition of the Senate Judiciary Committee ensures that his replacement will also be a Democrat.
• The War in Iraq will definitely change. With Democrats in charge of the budget, they will not sit idly by and spend billions more in Iraq. Bush's idea of victory, "a nation that can sustain itself, govern itself, and defend itself," may need to be pared down and a timeline may be created for withdrawing troops. Many political analysts observed that voters cast their ballots the way they did for two reasons: the economy and Iraq. Voters don't want this war to slog on forever, especially when it appears that there's no end in sight and, like Monopoly, there's no clear way to win. Democrats must leverage this by saying, "We didn't want to get involved in this war in the first place, and if we said we did, it's because we were duped into it by accidentally or intentionally phony intelligence."
• Bush Tax Cuts will expire. Even as Bush says the economy is getting better, he's using only a few indicators as evidence that it's "getting better." Mean income is up, and so is the stock market, but these indicators can be skewed. An increase in mean income could just mean that the rich are getting richer. As for the stock market, only a select few have enough money in the stock market to make its increase mean anything. Other indicators, such as median income, indicate that "average" Americans are doing worse than they were last year. Median figures, unlike mean figures, can't be skewed by extremely large or extremely small numbers. When Bush says the economy is doing better, he means it's doing better for the wealthy, "the top one percent," as Al Gore and others liked to call it. The average American -- who lives in Virginia, Missouri, Indiana, and Ohio -- is not doing that well, and this American voted for a change of pace.

Now we get to spend the next two years figuring out what's been going on behind our backs for the last five years. Oh, and Germany is planning on filing criminal charges against Donald Rumsfeld for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. (Not that the charges would mean anything; the U.S. isn't a party to the International Criminal Court, only to the Geneva Conventions.)