It's the day after in the "Show Me State," and at lunch in a diner in Clayton, outside St. Louis, everybody's talking.
"I guess people are fed up and they want change," says one.
They certainlywanted it here.
"Gas prices, taxes, some of the decisions in Iraq, that didn't help much, so I think we're due for some changes," says another.
"The country cannot afford another Republican Congress," said Harry Truman on the campaign trail in 1948.
The name of this state's favorite son was invoked often during this campaign.
"The party of FDR and Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run," said President Bush in September at a stop in Birmingham, Ala.
But Tuesday night voters returned Truman's Senate seat to the Democratic Party he led.
"I think Americans are just tired of what's going on in Washington," says another diner.
At a weekly Bible study outside a local cafe, they were expressing disappointment with last night's vote. And then, news of even more change, as I informed them that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had just resigned.
"Oh, he has?" says one. "Well, I think that is good news actually."
"I think it's time for him to go," says another.
Lifelong Republican Bob Scherl did something for the first time last night. He voted Democrat. Was it a protest?
"I am definitely protesting the way the Republicans have ran this state and are running the world right now," he says.
And he continues sweeping the leaves from the front of his business — as the political seasons change from Washington to Missouri.