It went better than we thought.
The final tallies are still in the air. But even with what we know so far -- boy howdy.
Democrats don't just win the Texas Senate seat -- they win essentially every contested statewide race there is. Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Railroad Commissioner, four Supreme Court seats -- it's a wrecking ball.
Ohio? Flipped. South Carolina? Flipped. Iowa? Flipped. Kansas? Flipped. Mississippi?(!?!?) May well just flip. That doesn't even get into the races that we "expected" to win -- and isn't it fun to treat Georgia and North Carolina as "expected"? And let's not forget Maine. Perhaps Susan Collins should've been more concerned.
El-Sayed looks like he'll win Michigan, meaning my most pessimistic prediction (which I made pre-Stevens betrayal) didn't pan out. I'm glad to see it. Ironically, it kind of does seem like AES ran behind other Democrats in the context of this historic tsunami year (he's lagging Jocelyn Benson in the Governor's race by about four points), but it's still going to be enough for him to win.
Maybe there was still some meat on the bone. Florida and Louisiana were tantalizing close. Could some more national support have made the difference? Maybe. Hindsight is 20-20. I find it hard to wonder what could have been given the magnitude of the victory.
The House looks to be a complete landslide. A subtler pleasure of the evening was seeing Republican names I hadn't thought about for years pop up on the screen, only to learn they were losing races that weren't even seen as competitive. Scott DesJarlais, Ann Wagner, and Virginia Foxx, you're being paged.
Closer to home, there were fewer surprises. Tina Kotek's reelection was called early. My congresswoman, "Give 'em hell" Janelle Bynum, won reelection handily, as did Marie Gluesenkamp Perez across the river in Washington. We look set to reelect all our Portland city councilors, as I predicted. Shannon Singleton seems poised for an upset win to take the Multnomah County Chair, which I also predicted (probably my best "upset" prediction).
What am I still waiting on? Alaska, obviously; and the conclusion of the Mississippi race which seems almost sure to go to a recount (still can't believe that). Nevada hasn't reported any results for some reason. I'm really rooting for Scott Wiener to win his D-on-D matchup against Connie Chan to succeed Nancy Pelosi (he's up 10 with about half reporting).
But honestly? It's already a demolition derby. And the feels really good.
I do think we should take a moment to celebrate this outcome -- a victory shared by all factions of the party, from moderate to progressive. In terms of what's next, we're already hearing a lot of word salad about whether Democrats need to be bipartisan or "get things done" or cooperate or do this or that. My view is that Democrats need to be Democrats. Pass popular laws and dare Trump to veto them. Put Trump's criminal associates' feet to the fire. Show genuine oversight. Tackle corruption. And where Democrats have taken back power at the state level, do anything and everything possible to shore up democracy. These wins by no means show that the egregious attacks on our voting rights and our democratic system itself were irrelevant or overblown.
The thing about once-in-a-generation tsunamis is that they don't typically last for an entire generation. Seize this opportunity to get things done, and show people that Democrats are a party worth voting for not in one election with one deeply unpopular president, but regularly, across many elections to come.
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