No sugar coating it: it was a disaster for Republicans.

Worse, if possible, is that exactly nobody saw it coming. Even the Democrats were stunned that they dodged the bullet. After all, they were blindfolded, tied to a stake, had eaten their last meal, smoked their last cigarette, and the last rites had been delivered.

Yet it sure looks like the entire firing squad aimed about as well as a Star Wars stormtrooper.

The dust is still settling and the votes are still being counted, but the overall landscape has been revealed: everybody was arguing about the size of the Red wave, and nobody noticed that the sea wall that that the Democrats had hastily built was pretty strong.

Lots of effort is going to be poured into figuring out how the Democrats did it. Exit polls are going to be dissected. New polls are going to be conducted. Pundits will have a field day. Insert metaphor here–I am exhausted from staying up too late.

It is still within the realm of possibility that Republicans can salvage a few competitive seats and gain control of the Senate–I think–but the smart money is against that possibility.

Many people were expecting a full blown civil war to break out among the Democrats come today, and instead we should prepare for one among the Republicans.

Every single factor, save 2, that would affect the election favored the Republicans. Americans are in a foul mood, and have a right to be. Things suck. Even Democrats think so, and have been willing to tell pollsters that. Most Democrats think Biden shouldn’t be president and want him off the ticket in 2024.

Yet Democrats did pretty well last night. So what about the 2 issues weighing, potentially, in their favor? The ones they put all the chips on in their election advertisements?

One was abortion, of course. They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the issue.

The other? Donald J. Trump, whom they portrayed as an existential threat to the Republic, and one for whom, apparently from the exit polls released so far, the disapproval ratings are higher than the president’s with the people who voted.

I and most other people thought that Trump’s influence in the election, save for candidate selection, would be minimal. He wasn’t on the ballot and had been fairly quiet until the end, when he popped his head up and started to regain attention.

And for the most part I think his influence was modest, save in candidate selection. I need a lot more data to make any serious judgment.

But clearly his candidate selections were not stellar. J.D. Vance won, but it took tens of millions of dollars from Mitch McConnell–the hated one–to carry him across the finish line. Ohio should have been a cake walk. I didn’t follow the race and have nothing positive or negative to say about Vance, whom I will assume is a fine man and will be a worthy Senator.

Oz? What to say? He may be the one human being who could lose to Fetterman. He lost to Fetterman. A brain damaged man who can barely speak. Bolduc, about whom I have no opinion at all positive or negative, lost big to a Senator that at the beginning of the campaign was considered the most vulnerable.

That is some seriously bad candidate selection.

I am not among the Never-Trumpers. My problems with him are mainly with his personality–I have never liked the guy, but I would vote for him over any Democrat in a heartbeat. He was a great president until COVID hit. Far better than anybody but his biggest fans could have expected.

But politically? He obviously is not an asset to Republicans. His political judgment is terrible. And while he is apparently quite good at asking others to give support to his choices, he didn’t spend a lot of effort or money to help those candidates he chose himself.

I will have more to say about this when I have ingested more caffeine, but my takeaway from last night is that unfortunately we are facing a civil war in the Republican Party over Trump–exactly what neither the country nor the party need at this time.

America is in crisis. The world is in crisis.

And we will spend the next year fighting about Donald Trump.