The dust had barely settled when clear winners and losers began to emerge from the Democrats' dramatic capture of the House and maybe even the Senate. (That won't be known until a recount is completed weeks from now in the deadlocked Senate race in Virginia.) We decided to take a look at who's up and who's down now that so many familiar GOP faces will be taking their last government-paid shuttle back home at the end of this year and fresh leaders will emerge. From winners like the new most powerful woman in the United States (sorry, Hillary and Condi, but you'll have to get in line behind Nancy) to losers like the president's "stay the course" strategy in Iraq, the new world order is looking very interesting indeed.

With President Bush nominating former CIA Director Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, Washington is scrambling to figure out what the change might mean for policy in Iraq. For one thing, it is the first clear signal that Bush is looking for a new path. Gates has been serving on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, which is due to release its new strategy for Iraq in the coming weeks.

Robert Gates, Bush's recommended Rumsfeld replacement, has filled the shoes of a big-footed predecessor before. In October 2002, he replaced Ray Bowen as president of Texas A&M University, taking on not just the legacy of the eight-term president but also his Vision 2020 plan to make Texas A&M a top 10 public university by the year 2020. Not everyone has liked Gates's bold moves: One student argued Gates's pitch for change was "out of touch" with the student body in a 2004 opinion piece. But many have supported Gates. After holding listening sessions with students and appointing a student representative to a dean search committee, Gates was praised for his "commitment to students".

He was born Sept. 24, 1943, in Wichita, Kan. In 1965, he graduated from the College of William and Mary, where he was named the graduate "who has made the greatest contribution to his fellow man." He holds a master's degree in history from Indiana University and a doctorate in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University. He attained the rank of Eagle Scout, received the Distinguished Eagle Scout award, and is president of the National Eagle Scout Association. In November 1991, he became CIA director after a lengthy nomination process tainted by the Iran-contra affair. He is the only career officer in CIA history to rise from entry-level employee to director. During his confirmation hearing, he told the Senate committee, "I arrived in Washington 25 years ago … with everything I owned in the back of a 1965 Mustang and no money." He served as director until Jan. 20, 1993. In 1996, he published his memoir, From the Shadows: the Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. He assumed the presidency of Texas A&M University in 2002. In early 2005, he turned down a request from the White House to become the first director of national intelligence. John Negroponte took the job. In December 2005, he was elected chairman of the Independent Trustees of the Fidelity Funds. Gates said that he has missed only one meeting since he was named to the board in 1997. It was held the weekend that Texas A&M dedicated a memorial to students who had died in a bonfire accident. In March 2006, he joined a bipartisan group responsible for assessing the Bush administration's Iraq policies. Friends and coworkers have described him as tenacious and driven, with tremendous powers of concentration and an ability to distill vast amounts of information.

The departure of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gives the Bush administration some breathing room as it tries to rebuild public support for the Iraq war in the wake of Democratic gains in yesterday's congressional elections.

Apocryphal story: the late Morris Udall, standing up at the podium on election night after finishing second in the fifth presidential primary in a row.

1. A fourth-generation Missourian, McCaskill was born in July 1953 and raised in the state.

Along with the Democratic sweep in Congress came historic firsts for Democratic women in party leadership positions. I interviewed Democratic pollster Celinda Lake today and asked her whether '06 would turn out to be the year of women leaders in American politics, as '92 was the "Year of the Woman." She responded: "I think '06 is the year of the Democratic woman and the year of women in leadership. You have the first woman speaker, which is very exciting. You have the first woman head of the National Governors Association, Governor [Janet] Napolitano from Arizona. You have women in other races taking leadership positions. You have the highest record number of women in the Senate. You have the first woman Supreme Court justice in Alabama elected?and the only Democrat, I might add. You have just recently in the last year the first African-American woman head of the Georgia Supreme Court, so it's really women in the pipeline for a long time emerging into leadership positions, and that's very exciting."

Conventional wisdom says that the stock market loves gridlock in Washington, D.C.

Invasive meningococcal disease is a nasty strain of bacterial meningitis that kills up to 14 percent of people who get it and leaves 19 percent of survivors with severe disabilities such as deafness, retardation, and limb loss. So, many parents were irked by summer shortages of a new vaccine that federal officials have recommended for kids ages 11 and up. Older teens heading off to college typically had access to the vaccine, Menactra, while their younger brothers and sisters generally didn't. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the shortages have ended, and renewed the call for 11-and-12-year-olds to be vaccinated.

"It's like Christmas," says a University of Michigan student who supported the winning Proposition 2, which bans some forms of affirmative action, the Michigan Daily reports. The proposition's victory--about 62 percent of voters supported it--came despite the fact that its campaign had only a third as much money as the campaign against it as of last week, says the Chronicle of Higher Education, which also says the ban could have wide-ranging effects. In addition to race-based admissions policies, it could "affect many recruitment, scholarship, or student-support programs geared toward helping minority students get into and through public colleges in the Great Lakes State," the Chronicle says. Inside Higher Ed points out exit polls that show the ban passed because of "support from men."

Young people aren't famous for loving to vote. This year was different in some places, not so different in others. Below, we've got a run-down of the winners and losers in the turnout wars, as unscientifically measured by campus newspaper reports.

Updated 11/8/06, 2:35 p.m.

Showing up at the polls is one thing. Putting your name on the ballot and actually winning an election, as Northeastern University sophomore political science major Jeff Fontas did yesterday, is a whole other thing. Fontas will serve his Nashua, N.H., district in the New Hampshire statehouse.

Inspired by Gov.-elect Deval Patrick's higher-ed positions, University of Massachusetts students voted enthusiastically, the Daily Collegian reports. Student turnout was "way up" at the University of Pennsylvania, the Daily Pennsylvanian reports. A polling manager tells the Montana Kaimin she watched a steady stream of voters flow into her polling station--"something we're not used to here," she said. Students at Kent State went so far as to climb into vans to cast their votes, the Stater reports.

Updated: November 8, 2006, 2:24 p.m.

? Yesterday's elections results bring to mind this quote from a recent story I wrote about the impact of a Democratic congressional victory. As a Bush administration official put it then, "The president is going to be a veto machine."

George Washington University students care?but their attention was less on CNN than it was on a fist-to-fist jousting match between the campus presidents of the College Democrats and the College Republicans. The Ball State University Daily News manages to find some students who really care, a whole, whole lot. But their main issue: getting more young people to vote. A University of Southern California polling station had a consistent line out the door, starting at noon, says the Daily Trojan.

Some Columbia University students who registered with their campus addresses had to fill out provisional ballots--because they just couldn't find their polling station, says the Spectator. Washington University in St. Louis students had trouble, too--so much trouble that the Student Life newspaper calls out the university, arguing that by failing to clear up the confusion it "failed students".

A Duke Chronicle election blogger saw more students "absorbed in their economics textbooks or their dinner conversations" than by televisions tuned to CNN. A Rutgers University voting station had only 12 voters by noon yesterday, the Daily Targum reports, picking "quiet" as the euphemistic adjective of choice. A bunch of students tell San Diego State's Spartan Daily that they would vote--they just don't have time.