"The implications are vast, both at home and abroad, and anyone who ever pretended that the two parties are indistinguishable is about to receive a cruel lesson in political reality. Carried on a wave of post 9/11 patriotic approval, Mr Bush took on his demoralised opponents with total ruthlessness. He out-fundraised, out-spent, out-campaigned and out-worked the Democrats. His reward is a position from which he will launch a fresh round of tax cuts for the rich and welfare cuts for the poor, from which he will dismantle key parts of the federal government in favour of the states and corporations, and, most important of the lot, from which he will now make a raft of conservative judicial appointments, aimed at shifting power in America's courts conclusively to the right for decades to come." Guardian UK

"The Republicans said that public indignation, led by yokel Gov. Jesse Ventura, at Wellstone's "politicized" memorial slowed Mondale's eleventh-hour momentum. Ventura claimed he felt "violated" -- although why a man who wore pink tights and a feather boa in the wrestling ring should suddenly be treated as an arbiter of good taste is a bizarre detail. It would seem that hardy Minnesotans could withstand a little rock music and cheering at a politician's funeral.What happened to Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia was less merciful. He was the target of a merchant of malice named C. Saxby Chambliss, who was chosen by Bush to oppose him. In his TV ads Chambliss charged Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, with a failure of patriotism -- because he didn't support all provisions of Bush's homeland security bill. Even Lee Atwater, the famous South Carolina political cutthroat employed by the president's father, might have blanched at having a man who never wore the uniform trashing a war hero. Georgians bought it. They rejected Cleland 53 to 46." Wash Post