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Opinion: Joe Biden wrong again, Sarah Palin nails her picks, big-name losers and where was Hillary Clinton?

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Well, once again Joe Biden blew it.

Last June the voluble VP promised a summerful of economic recovery. Fail!

Then all fall he guaranteed his Democratic Party would maintain majority control of both houses of Congress. Fail!

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Democrats lost the House and came close in the Senate, losing 60% of their majority there. Meaning the VP may be spending more time up on Capitol Hill, where he started working when Barack Obama was a sixth-grader. there, he’ll preside as the tie-breaking president of the Senate. Good thing he didn’t try to predict results at the state level, where the GOP now controls a majority of governors, state legislatures and state legislative seats.

Other than that, a good night for VP prognosticating.

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How did the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, do on her endorsements? Well....

....Not bad in reality. Really great among TV commentators. Listening to many of them Tuesday night, you’d have thought Sarah Palin was pulling political strings all over the country. They called her, (politically incorrect) ‘a kingmaker.’ As if Mitt Romney et al hadn’t pretended to eat one rubber chicken dinner for any fellow GOP candidates all year long.

Palin’s endorsement losses: Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Carly Fiorina, West Virginia’s John Raese and her last-minute salute to third-party Tom Tancredo in Colorado.

Palin’s scores: Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Marco Rubio in Florida, John Kasich and Rob Portman in Ohio, Oklahoma’s Mary Fallin, New Mexico’s Susana Martinez, Texas’ Rick Perry and Arizona’s Jan Brewer.

Of course, those candidates had a little something to do with their own wins. While Romney and other GOP names like Govs. Haley Barbour, Tim Pawlenty and Chris Christie also helped in many places.

But that might diminish the Palin queenmaker storyline for 2012.

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Speaking of women in politics, Hillary Clinton could not have been in a better place for election night’s Democratic debacle.

She was halfway around the world. The Telegraph’s Toby Harnden tracked the secretary of State down in Papua, New Guinea, at some women’s empowerment summit. What a coincidence.

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Speaking of winners and losers, longtime Democratic committee heavyweights Ike Skelton, James Oberstar and John Spratt went under the bus. Barney Frank held on. So did Dennis Kucinich, whose winning margins are melting every cycle, now down to 53%.

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Louisiana’s Rep. Joseph Cao, Congress’ first Vietnamese native and the only Republican to buy Obama’s bipartisan spiel and vote for the president’s healthcare measure, lost his reelection bid, thanks in part to the commercial that an ungrateful Obama did for Democratic state legislator Cedric Richmond.

In California, Republican state Assemblyman Van Tran’s bid to become the second Vietnam native in Congress failed in the face of longtime incumbent Loretta Sanchez’s hold on the Orange County district.

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And who won the election night cable news ratings race? Looks like Fox News Channel, like the Republicans, came out on top for the night.

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According to Nielsen Media Research, FNC had almost 6.7 million viewers in the 8-11 prime-time slot, including almost 2.44 million in the prized 25-54 demographic. Fox News’ prime-time audience was 2.5 million more than the combined audiences of Brand X and Brand Y on cable.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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