Thread by @EsotericCD

My election 2018 postmortem analysis thread begins here.

The primary takeaway for both parties from last night: the phrase "Senator Romney" sounds weird af.

Srsly tho, unfinished business first: I expect Tester to barely hold on in MT-SEN as the final returns come from Missoula and Gallatin Counties, places that voted big for him. But, as I kept insisting in the last month, this race was way closer than the media made it out to be.

In AZ-SEN, the race is all over: McSally (R) has beaten expectations to keep this seat in the GOP column. That means GOP ends up +3 on the night, with pickups in IN, MO, ND and FL (!) offset by the loss in NV.

This is bad news for Dems, for obvious reasons and less obvious ones.

The obvious reason it's bad for Democrats is because, well, the GOP just increased its margin in the Senate. Confirming judges will be easier. The power of Collins and Murkowski, for example, to affect a race is now diluted. Rick Scott ain't gonna be caviling about such things.

The less obvious reason is that this affects 'out years' as well. Assume 2020 is a repudiation of Trump and a good year nationally for Dems. Their task in retaking the Senate (which has a lot of GOP seats up!) just got far harder. CO and NC are the only obvious targets, maybe IA.

And remember, even if the Dems pick up all three of those Senate seats (bouncing Gardner, Tillis and Ernst), they're still giving back Doug Jones' seat in AL to the GOP. It's hard to see how they take the Senate in 2020, or 2022 for that matter, absent a massive recession.

As for the House, Democrats should be both wary about the tenuousness of their newfound majority, but generally very pleased about their gains.

A lot of people spoke last night about how 2018 looked less like a 'wave' than a 'realignment' and there's truth to it: hard to see VA-10, CO-6, FL-27, or FL-26 coming back to the GOP any time soon. OTOH, KS-3, NY-11, and OK-5 will revert to GOP form eventually.

The real nut of it for House outlook are all those suburban seats that the GOP lost: IL-6 (Roskam), TX-7 (Culberson), TX-32 (Sessions), etc. etc. There is an unspoken assumption among psephologists that these will continue to move away from the GOP toward Dems. I'm not so sure.

Only time will tell where those seats eventually go, especially in a post-Trump era ("President Kamala Harris" may well have a very different effect upon voters in those CDs than "President Donald Trump" did).

One bright spot for GOP in that regard is in Ohio. The GOP held all their seats in this historic swing state, won every statewide race except Sherrod Brown's (OH-SEN), and even he surprisingly underperformed given the weakness of his GOP opponent's campaign. OH is turning red.

But also, a big bright spot for the Democrats in same way is Texas. Beto may have lost, but the real victory for the Dems was his downballot coattails, which were very real. Cruz didn't pay the price for his general odiousness last night; his fellow Republicans downballot did.

Which brings us to the REAL victory for the Ds last night, one which frustrated D enthusiasts who wanted a BIG BLUE WAVE are hugely undervaluing as they gnash their teeth about the Senate: Democratic performance on the statewide level.

From small things big things one day come.

I remember how ticked off I was after election night in 2010, despite the fact that the GOP gained a historic 63 seats in House. Instead, I focused on how they frittered away Senate seats in CO, DE, NV, and the near miss in WA.

But I didn't appreciate the downballot carnage.

What the GOP did in 2010 (and then again in 2014) was build A BENCH. Candidates don't just come out of nowhere (Trump himself notwithstanding). Winners usually win local first, then state-level, statewide, THEN they go federal.

The GOP's bench was wiped out in 2006/2008. But they rebuilt it in 2010/2014. The Democrats have just gone a ways towards rebuilding their bench in 2018, particularly in juicy target states like TX, AZ, GA, etc. And they broke redistricting trifectas in MI and WI, among others.

Weirdly, the one state where the Democrats didn't build a bench outside of the topline was Wisconsin: Evers defeated Walker (the sun ain't gonna shine anymore, alas), but the GOP held every seat in the assembly and actually GAINED in the state senate. Go figure.

Other than Evers, the Wisconsin Dems' one big gain was the state AG position...and I think Kaul will prove to be an ambitious pol.