It could have been worse.

Two years ago or maybe even last year, if someone had told me that the GOP could essentially hold serve in the Senate for the 2022 midterms, I might have considered that a success. After all, not only did Republicans have to defend seven more of their seats than Democrats (21 and 14, respectively), five of their incumbents decided to retire, making it tougher to hold them. As it stands, Republicans only lost one of those seats and still has a shot in Georgia to flip one back from the Democrats.

Still, with the late-reporting losses in Nevada and Arizona, Republicans have lost their chance to win back control of the Senate. And even if on paper a 50-seat hold looks good under the circumstances, we all know better. We had a golden opportunity to overperform in this midterm cycle and the GOP blew it. We will spend the next several days, weeks, and months debating how we blew it, but blew it we did, and blew it good.

In one sense, though, we don’t have months or even weeks. Republicans have one last chance to at least keep 50 seats in the caucus by winning the December 6 runoff election in Georgia. We blew a couple of those two years ago too, which is why we’re in this conundrum now. Hopefully, this failure will awaken Republicans and get them focused on voter priorities rather than elite grievances in the final days of the 2022 campaign and Herschel Walker can get pushed across the 50%+1 finish line. And even with all of the other debacles now made clear, the GOP still has a good chance of winning.

And you know what that means? If we get back to a 50/50 Senate, then we’ll get two more years of … speculating whether Joe Manchin will cross the aisle to the GOP.

But why wait? We can have some fun now, even though a Raphael Warnock win would moot the question. A Manchin flip to a 49-seat caucus wouldn’t make any difference to either party, since it would make the chamber 50/50 again and Kamala Harris would secure Democrat control of the upper chamber in that case.

Let’s take the dangerous route of assuming the GOP’s competence in the runoff. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know … can’t a blogger dream, man?

The Senate would once again be 50/50 and Chuck Schumer would remain in control of the floor. That would be the same Chuck Schumer that just got done screwing Manchin on the laughably labeled “Inflation Reduction Act.” Manchin signed onto it for deficit reduction, only to watch Joe Biden blow that out of the water by trying to blow a trillion dollars on an unconstitutional vote-buying spree by forgiving student-loan debt.

And then Joe Biden all but declared war on coal workers last week, which Manchin angrily rebutted. Manchin’s influence on the Democrat side of the aisle is all but dead. Those coal workers and everyone else in West Virginia will be gearing up to make sure the same can be said about Manchin’s political career when his seat comes up in 2024.

That, by the way, will be a very interesting cycle for Democrats. Thirty-three seats will go up for election, and Republicans only have to defend ten of them. Democrats have 21, plus the two held by Bernie Sanders and Angus King. Joe Manchin would be the most endangered of the lot, but Democrats will also be defending seats in Ohio, Montana, Arizona, Virginia, and Wisconsin in a presidential cycle — with Joe Biden either at the top of the ticket or deposed in an internecine power battle. Even a GOP as incompetent as we saw in this cycle should have no problem getting back to a majority, even from 49 seats in the next session.

It will once again come down to Manchin’s desire for survival. Does he really want to retire? If not, the only path for him to return to the Senate is by crossing the aisle — and the only way to do that with any sort of benefit to Manchin’s re-election hopes is to hand control of the upper chamber to the GOP. If he waits until 2024 to do that, it will be worthless. The value in Manchin’s flip is to block Biden’s energy policies starting in January, especially the policies hostile to coal and natural gas.

Or so the argument for speculation will go, assuming Walker pulls off a runoff win. And it will be a lot of fun watching for signals over the following weeks if Walker wins, too. If nothing else, it will give us all something to argue over until the next time Manchin stiffs his constituents and plays enabler to Schumer and Biden.