Saturday Evening Post Midterms

As I write this the Dems are one seat away from keeping the Senate, and keeping the House is not yet mathematically impossible. I’m still reading post-mortems. The answer to the question of why Republicans didn’t do better seems to be that in several states — not all of them — where abortion rights had been shut down and a bunch of MAGA election deniers were running as Republicans, more independents and some centrist Republicans voted for the Democrats. So while people may have said they were mostly worried about the economy, a lot of them were voting abortion rights and saving democracy. Here’s a New Yorker article that explains this pretty well.

Dan Balz writes at WaPo that the elections turned into a kind of dual referendum on both Biden and Trump, and Trump lost. Balz also noted that congressional incumbents are mostly keeping their seats. Voters weren’t demanding big changes in Congress. I suspect what they want more than anything else is some stability. We’ve had enough drama. Some states flipped from red to blue, however.

Anyway, the anti-abortion nutjobs and Trump cost Republicans big time, and I suspect a lot of them are smart enough to realize that. Unfortunately for them, there is no way Trump will be persuaded to step aside graciously.

Update: Catherine Cortez Masto wins in Nevada, so Dems keep control of the Senate. Mitch is shut out once again.