While I've been too bogged down with a miserable cold to be depressed, via Glenn Reynolds I see that Ann Althouse is depressed, because she sees the election as an American failure:

It's the failure of Americans to support the war. It's the folding and crumpling because things didn't go well enough and the way we conspicuously displayed that to our enemies. They're going to use that information.

(Perhaps I should consider myself lucky that I've been too sick to be depressed. Hmmm.... Maybe there's something to the torture-cures-depression theory. Or maybe not. Because if it did, wouldn't the awful torture of the election cheer up depressed Republicans?)

But I don't think the voters saw themselves as not supporting the war. I think they were frustrated by years of denial of the high costs of the war.

The war has cost more than money; it has also (as I explained in the last post) cost the Republicans their ideology, and thus I think a good argument can be made that the war cost the Republicans the election. To the extent that they downplayed the war and failed to defend it as an election issue, Republicans lost credibility. Especially against conservative Democratic candidates with solid military records.

Quite understandably, Ann Althouse thinks the election results will be misinterpreted:

What I'm concerned about is national security and, consequently, the way the election was fought and is being interpreted. I'm upset because I think we have sent a terrible message to our enemies: Just hang on long enough and continue to inflict some damage, and the Americans will lose heart and give up. You barely need anything at all. You might not be able to hijack a plane with a box cutter anymore, but you can take back a country -- a country we conquered with overwhelming military power -- merely by mercilessly and endlessly setting off small bombs in your own town day after day.

How much harder it becomes ever to fight and win a war again. Only pacifists and isolationists should feel good about the way this election was won.

On the bright side, though, this election was not won by anti-war candidates.

And it has to be remembered that it is not in the interest of the Democrats for America to lose the war just as they emerge from minority to majority status.

While many of them are anti-war, that doesn't make them anti-power. Just as small government Republicans can jettison principles and get on the big government bandwagon, antiwar Democrats can take off their tie-dyes and put on military uniforms.

Hey, whatever works, right?

(The whole thing is more depressing than I want to admit, and I'm almost glad to be sick.)

UPDATE: This Reuters report makes it easy to understand why Ann Althouse is depressed:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called U.S. President George W. Bush's defeat in congressional elections a victory for Iran.

Bush has accused Iran of trying to make a nuclear bomb, being a state sponsor of terrorism and stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq, all charges Tehran denies.

"This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America, but it is the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world," Khamenei said in remarks reported by Iran's student news agency ISNA on Friday.

"Since Washington's hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation, this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."

The Democrats wrested control of both houses of Congress from the Republicans in this week's mid-term elections, partly because of voter concern over the war in Iraq.

(If he had, it would have been reported, wouldn't it?)