Despite threats of a Trump-led Red Wave, Democrats retained control of the Senate, with the re-election of Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada. If Rev. Warnock wins in Georgia, the party will have 51 votes in the Senate and won’t be held hostage by one Democratic Senator (looking at you, Joe Manchin). The control of the House may go to the Republicans, but by a small margin.

The extremism that characterizes today’s Republican party was largely repudiated. This election was not a good one for QAnon crazies and assorted lunatics of the far-right fringe. Some were re-elected, but it should be clear to the Republican Party that it needs a major course correction and a return to sanity and sensible conservatism. Time to oust those who want to destroy our democracy and to crush those who don’t think as they do. The future belongs to those who want to govern responsibly, not those who want to burn down the house we live in.

No less important was the defeat of all but one election denier running in the states to be Secretary of State, the official who controls elections.

The New York Times reported:

Every election denier who sought to become the top election official in a critical battleground state lost at the polls this year, as voters roundly rejected extreme partisans who promised to restrict voting and overhaul the electoral process.

The national repudiation of this coalition reached its apex on Saturday, when Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Nevada, defeated Jim Marchant, according to The Associated Press. Mr. Marchant, the Republican nominee, had helped organize a national right-wing slate of candidates under the name “America First.”

With Mr. Marchant’s loss to Mr. Aguilar, all but one of those “America First” candidates were defeated. Only Diego Morales, a Republican in deep-red Indiana, was successful, while candidates in Michigan, Arizona and New Mexico were defeated.

Their losses halted a plan by some allies of former President Donald J. Trump and other influential donors to take over the election apparatus in critical states before the 2024 presidential election. The “America First” candidates, and their explicitly partisan statements, had alarmed Democrats, independent election experts and even some Republicans, who feared that if they gained office, they could threaten the integrity of future elections.

Mr. Marchant not only repeatedly claimed that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 election, but he pledged that if he were elected, Mr. Trump would again be president in 2024.

“When my coalition of secretary of state candidates around the country get elected, we’re going to fix the whole country, and President Trump is going to be president again in 2024,” Mr. Marchant said at a rally held by the former president in October….

The Washington Post reported that Democrats made impressive gains in state races too:

After years of watching Republicans dominate in down-ballot races, Democrats turned the tables to their own advantage in the midterm elections, flipping some legislative chambers from GOP control and blocking efforts to create veto-proof majorities in others.


In Pennsylvania, where votes continued to be counted, Democrats are on the precipice of taking control of the state House for the first time since 2008. Democrats also won Michigan’s House and Senate, as well as the Minnesota Senate. The reelection victories for Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (Mich.) and Tim Walz (Minn.) give Democrats total control over those two states — for the first time in Michigan since after the 1982 election.

If the early results hold up in states where some races remain undetermined, Democrats will not have lost control of a single legislature that they previously held, a feat not accomplished by the president’s party during a midterm election since 1934.


The victories blunted Republican plans to push further restrictions on abortion, transgender rights, school curriculums and spending, and in some states expanded Democrats’ possibilities of passing their own priorities….

With some states still counting, Republicans control both chambers of 26 state legislatures, down from 30 before the election. Democrats fully control 19, up from 17 before Tuesday.