I’ve left Columbus and am now sitting in the AFL-CIO’s headquarters in Washington DC, next to Kombiz Lavasany of MyDD and soon, Pachacutec of FireDogLake. I’ll be here watching election returns and monitoring events in Connecticut, Ohio, and around the country. Hopefully tonight will culminate in cathartic joy as a resounding Democratic victory echoes around the country.

I’d never been to Ohio before this weekend and I honestly didn’t know much about Columbus as a town before my trip. That said, I loved it there. I’ve never been in a place in America where people were as universally warm and friendly as in Columbus. The organizers and political operatives that I met on my trip were, on whole, the savviest, smartest bunch of activists I’ve ever met on a campaign or in a political office. Their competence and intelligence gives me great hope for the races that I was covering and the success of the minimum wage ballot initiative. I look forward to finding my way back to Columbus in the not too distant future.

I haven’t made any predictions in any race this election cycle and I do not intend to change that now - I’m not a prognosticator and though I have my opinions about every race that I have written about over the last year, I don’t feel that my analysis transcends the hunches, speculations and wishful thinking provided by any other prognosticator, professional or blogger. I have a lot of intellectual problems with any model that proposes massive swings in districts from Monday to Thursday, with no events taking place other than the arrival of a new poll. The CT senate primary, in particular, demonstrated the inability for serious polling outfits to craft models that accurately reflect the situation on the ground.

The only prediction that I will make is this: Democrats will win control of the House. Give me a one seat majority and we will have achieved what we need - anyone who tells you a small Democratic majority constitutes a Democratic defeat will have conclusively revealed themselves as a right wing hack (not surprisingly, Adam Nagourney is paving the way for this narrative in the traditional press).

The other thing that I would add is that if voters do deliver Democrats a majority, particularly if it reaches both chambers and is more than a few votes in the House, Democrats must commit to legislating their mandate. Voting Republicans out of the majority will be a sign of sever discontent with the rubber-stamp Bush Congress (to borrow a phrase from Mary Jo Kilroy’s campaign manager, Scott Kozar). Changing which party is in power is about changing the direction our country is heading in. It is not a request to “govern from the center” or “reach out across the aisle” or, most importantly, to “work with the president.” Votes for Democrats say the opposite and a resounding victory must be understood as a public demand for Democratic opposition to the Bush agenda.

That is, if we win.

So go vote Democratic. Ask your friends, family and neighbors to the same. I already did.