The goal of the majority party is to govern

Two points about that key phrase.

1. What the Dems have done in two years

I (and others) feel Obama and Pelosi got the big picture right. Healthcare reform feels to me as structure-of-the-economy and health-of-the-American-people game-changing as it could have been. (No, single-payer was probably never politically feasible in either house no matter WHAT the marketing was. Public option is more questionable.)
The bill eliminates some adverse selection problems, gives incentives for cost-cutting innovation (this point is controversial but Orzag just made it, and made it very emphatically, in a recent NYTimes opinion piece), and covers a hell of a lot of people who would have had worse lives without coverage (and hence, without this bill).

I don't know as much about the financial regulation bill, so I won't comment on it here. But the other important parts of the '08 to '10 Dems' achievements are genuine achievements that are worth losing an election for. Two example come to mind. F, the slow but inventive education reform (Race to the Top). Second, a stimulus (that Krugman thinks was not big enough especially in terms of how much money it pushed into people's pockets in the first year after passage, but was still waaay better than nothing, if you believe in the recession macroeconomics of "slack demand" that we get taught in school)

I hesitantly think Obama pushed as far as he could on climate change action once he made the big choice of prioritizing health care reform as the first big project to be tackled. He (and the EPA) are TOTAL ballers to start regulating (limiting) big CO2 emitting factories and power plants. Let's see if that threat provides the impetus for action even in a Republican-controlled House and close-to-balanced Senate. My instincts say fat chance - but big ups to the executive branch for trying this gambit. (Or maybe it's not a gambit...? Perhaps Obama really thinks climate change is dangerous enough to regulate via the Clean Air Act now that the Senate has failed to pass its own American Clean Energy Security act...?)

As to Copenhagen, I think Obama was PERFECT. Made the US look somewhat cooperative and got China and India to agree to emissions intensity targets. Yes, I know that none of the agreements had teeth or were even especially ambitious. But what did you expect him to do when Senate action was unlikely at best!? Pull a Kyoto-Protocol Bill Clinton and reinforce America's reputation in international climate treaties as "all Presidential signature, no Congressional ratification" ?!

2. What the GOP plans to do with the next two

Recent NYTimes article about the GOP's post-2008-shellacking plan to take back government quotes one slide as saying that the purpose of the minority party is to become the majority. This, combined with Mitch McConnell's stated first priority being a GOP win in the Presidential election in 2012... My conclusion is that the Republicans clearly still don't see themselves as majority party yet. Which spells bad news for the country as a whole.

Will the Republicans be willing to make the tough choices that need to be made for the country's greater long term good despite expenditure of political capital?

I'm not holding my breath - even on their stated (and, I feel, legit) long-term goal of lowering the budget deficit.

I'm scared they don't want to do anything that would risk 2012 victories at the polls.

Mama Earth dodges a few bullets

From the point of view of nature, this year's elections didn't go as badly as they could have. If we were giving Americans grades for fucking up the planet through the ballot box, I would be handing out a B. With both houses potentially going to the party that is unwilling to take a real stand against climate change , a big fat A+ was in the cards.

The Senate did not go totally Republican, although with double the amount of Dems as Republicans up for election in 2012, a Grand Old Senate ain't far off.

Even though it was pretty ugly watching various American states vote one after the other for climate change deniers, the most symbolic Republican victory was -- if you can believe it -- ALSO something of a victory for Mother Earth. Mark Kirk, who snatched Obama's old Senate seat from out of the Democrats' hands, is, in a word, an environmental baller. He's one of 7 or 8 house Republicans who voted for Waxman and Markey's Cap and Trade bill -- and yes, he took a WHOLE lot of shit for that vote from his base -- and he did it for the right reasons (fuel independence AND getting our greenhouse gas emissions lower). Let's see if he and a few northeastern Republicans can get behind an altered Cap-and-Dividend bill...?
Plus, Kirk voted for McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. God, I don't think I've ever had a bigger man-crush on a living republican policymaker.

Sharon Angle lost. Yahoo...? I can't believe that race went down to the wire.

Also - even if in the world's biggest economy was willing to play fast and loose with their children's future natural capital, at least voters in the world's eighth largest economy took a stand. California's Proposition 23 went down in flames. And you know what? I'm GLAD the Global Warming Solutions Act was put to the referendum test. It was scary when the polls were close, but now serious action on climate change has an incontrovertible mandate in this state.

Unfortunately, even CA gets some points on its fuck-up-the-planet scorecard for voting Ye on Prop 26, thereby hamstringing the state's ability to raise funds to back up the Global Warming Solutions Act. I think the truth is that Prop 23 was the true climate killer, though. Murder avoided.

Two questions that I have yet to figure out.
1) Does Prop 26 block CA's ability to use cap-and-trade under the Global Warming Solutions Act?
2) Now that we only need 50% to pass a budget, who cares if raising fees need 2/3 support? Couldn't they just be rolled into the budget -- thereby requiring only a super-majority?