Tuesday's election

The election on Tuesday was disappointing for Republicans, but not nearly the “blowout” for Democrats that some are making it out to be. However, it was a good night for the pro-abortion movement.

The key results that favored the Dems were in Kentucky, Virginia, and Ohio. Let’s start with Kentucky where the Democratic governor was reelected.

Naturally, Republicans were disappointed not to defeat a Democratic governor in a Red state. However, nothing changed — the Dem merely retained a governorship. And down ballot, Republicans prevailed by big margins.

Thinking ahead one year, it would take a national rout of almost inconceivable proportions for the Democratic presidential nominee to carry Kentucky in 2024.

In Virginia, Democrats kept control of the state Senate and won control of the House of Delegates. This was bad news for Virginians and for their governor, Glenn Youngkin.

It was also disappointing for Republicans generally because it suggests that Youngkin’s victory last year may not presage the Commonwealth moving from Blue to Purple state status. It also suggests that for suburban voters, at least those in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., the abortion issue is more important than issues of education and crime.

On the other hand, the Democrats’ victory in Virginia was a narrow one. Despite being outspent and despite a redistricting that favored Democrats, the GOP won 48 of the 99 seats in the House of Delegates for which a winner has been declared. (As I write this, the winner of one seat has yet to be determined as far as I know.)

On the Senate side, the GOP actually picked up a seat though it remains in the minority. And even in the D.C. suburbs, there were some encouraging results for the GOP, as the Washington Post acknowledges.

In any case, the road to the White House in 2024 does not run through Virginia. If it did, the Commonwealth would be among the swing states being surveyed by the pollsters.

Ohio passed an amendment granting a constitutional right to abortion. It did so by a big margin.

This is truly bad news for the anti-abortion movement. Ohio has become a center-right state. If an amendment like this can pass there, it can pass in large swaths of America.

Some smart people are downplaying the Ohio result. I hope I’m wrong, but to me this seems like whistling in the dark.

I recognize that the above observations don’t amount to dazzling insights. For a more original take, I recommend this post by Erick Erickson called “About Last Night: Republican Party 1854-2023. RIP.”

Here is some of what he writes:

Last night was a Rorschach test for how you see the Republican Party, and that, in and of itself, is the problem. It’s either all Trump or not all Trump and the reality and truth is that Trump and the MAGA brand work very well in some parts of the country and work very badly in others. Last night happened to have elections in parts of the country where it works very badly. . . .

The reality is that the GOP as a national party is dead. It is now a conglomeration of several regional parties. In parts of the country, Republicans must run wrapped in the MAGA label as Donald Trump candidates. In other parts of the country, they must run as far from Trump as possible. That renders the GOP a regional party of divergent views that must then assemble a coalition of disparate and often incompatible values.

For all the polling that shows Joe Biden doing a terrible job and people not liking Biden, the GOP might just be too divided to win nationally at this point. In fact, Joe Biden is hugely unpopular, and that should spell doom for his party. But that is not happening in the actual elections.

(Emphasis added)

Erickson may not be wrong, but I think he reads more into a handful of election results than seems warranted.