Immediate Post Election Observations

Stolen in whole from Infidel753. Emphasis where applied is mine:

There was no red wave. There was no blue wave. Most incumbents got re-elected. Whichever side ends up controlling the House and Senate will have a razor-thin margin.

Turnout was very high on both sides and the process ran smoothly pretty much everywhere, so it was a big win for democracy.

If the Republicans get the House majority, the margin will be small and the faction-riddled caucus will be difficult to keep unified. It may be that Democrats will still be able to pass occasional decent legislation by peeling off a few Republican votes. The really loopy stuff, like holding the debt ceiling hostage, may not work since just a few Republican defectors could undermine it.

There were some important state-level victories. Vermont, Michigan, Kentucky, and California voted by referendum to protect abortion rights — abortion is clearly a losing issue for the right wing. Illinois passed a ballot measure to strengthen unions, while Missouri passed one to legalize marijuana. Democrats won the Michigan state senate after forty years of Republican control.

Here in Oregon, the ballot measure I mentioned on Monday to take pro-slavery language out of the state constitution did pass, but more than half a million people voted against it.

The exasperating Lauren Boebert appears to have lost re-election.

Democrats need to stop trying to make Beto O'Rourke happen. An open and confirmed gun-grabber is never going to win any statewide office in Texas. It's just not possible.

If there was one big loser yesterday, it was Trump. Most of the major candidates he foisted on his party via his endorsements were defeated, some of them losing close races that a better candidate might have won. His intra-party arch-rival DeSantis won re-election as governor by a huge margin, boosting his stature and cementing his position as the dominant Republican alternative to Trump. The rivalry between the two will likely dominate the party from now until the 2024 race, perhaps dividing it severely.

But this election is over, and that's a hell of a relief.