2014 General Election in Review, National Edition

I won’t cover much more in this national review than I did on the national preview.  If you want to add anything that I didn’t discuss here, let the comment section be your oyster.

ALABAMA

Robert Bentley, an anti-Shari’ah measure and a pro-2A measure, all go through easily.

Now, as for that other guy on the ballot, the one all by himself…okay, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, lets talk about 2016.  And don’t give me this “I’m not qualified” bit.  I’m not leaving until you say yes.

ALASKA

This is what was so frustrating about the night from an immigration patriot standpoint.  Dan Sullivan, open borders all the way, toppled the Democrat incumbent.  Yet, Scott Brown, making immigration his A-1 issue contrasting himself with the Democrat incumbent he was running against, couldn’t win?

The new Governor will be Bill Walker, a former Republican mayor of Valdez turned Independent, turning out Sean Parnell, who took over when Sarah Palin resigned in 2009, Parnell having won a term in his own right in 2010.

Successful ballot measures:  Recreational weed, minimum wage increase.  No telling if the higher minimum wage will apply to those who work in recreational weed shops.

ARIZONA

Doug Ducey by 12, though the late polling only had him up 5.  Just as black turnout was sparse, so was Hispanic turnout.  And that helped Ducey have an easy night.

The only D to R Congressional party flip is the Tucson district that Gabby Giffords once held.

ARKANSAS

Oh yeah, this was really going to be close, a squeaker, a nail biter.

Tom Cotton by 17.  It’s almost as if Mark Pryor was a no-shot long shot challenger instead of a two-term incumbent.  Another example of black apathy making life easy for the red team.

The new Governor, Asa Hutchinson, was a House impeachment manager in 1999.  Meaning that after the House impeached then President Clinton, and the formal trial was held in the Senate, Hutchinson was one of several members of Congress selected as “prosecutors.”  Ironic, isn’t it?  He voted to impeach and attempted to quasi-prosecute one former Governor of Arkansas, while he’s about to become Governor of Arkansas himself.  Hutch was the Republican nominee for Governor in 2006 but lost to Mickey Bebee, who is outgoing and term-limited this year.

All six members of Arkansas’s House and Senate delegation, four House two Senate, plus the Governor, will be Republicans.  As late as four years ago and change at this time, the only Republican in that bunch was Congressman John Boozman, who was just about on the verge of toppling Blanche Lincoln to go to the Senate.

Minimum wage increase passes, and while an amendment to disallow dry counties got 57% of the vote, it failed because these things need some sort of supermajority.

CALIFORNIA

Mystery Meat didn’t even carry whites.

When will these RINOs ever be made to eat their own dog food?

We already have two Indian governors.  Why do we need a third one?

Unlike the red wave of 2010, the red wave of 2014 featured a D to R Congressional flip in California.

A ballot measure to weaken Three Strikes and downgrade a lot of felonies to misdemeanors passed.

And also…Sandra Fluke is NOT going to the State Senate. Who knew that there was an antipathy toward slutty law school students even in Los Angeles County?

COLORADO

I was always under the assumption that Bob Beauprez was polling better than Cory Gardner.  So the moment the media announced for Gardner, I thought that Beauprez was also a cinch.

Bonk.

If one was going to win and the other was going to lose, I always thought it was going to be Beauprez winning and Gardner losing.  Instead, we got the other way around.  I cannot figure the calculus or the rationale of someone in Colorado voting Gardner and Hickenlooper at the same time.  I can easily rationalize the other three permutations (voting for both Democrats, voting for both Republicans, voting Beauprez and Udall, and as you recall from my national preview, I recommended the latter option).  But the most inexplicable one is the one that happened in the real world.  Go f’n figure.

John Hickenlooper winning another term as Governor punches a hole in the “Tuesday was good for 2A” conclusion.

Back in the national preview, I was sad that Brian Dubie didn’t run for Vermont Governor, leaving me without the ability to make weed puns.  Well, I was saved:  The Green Party candidate for Governor in Colorado was Harry Hempy.

Ken Buck, who ran for Senate four years ago and who I wanted to run this year, instead swung a deal with the Republican brass in Colorado, that Cory Gardner would abandon his House seat (rural eastern Colorado) to run for the Senate, and Ken Buck would run for Gardner’s House seat.  Which he won on Tuesday, very easily.

CONNECTICUT

It took awhile, but Daniel Malloy eked it out, another term as Governor, beating Tom Foley in a rematch of four years ago.

Another reason why I’m not on board with the CW that Tuesday was so great for 2A politics.

The entirety of the state’s Congressional delegation remains blue.

DELAWARE

Chris Coons easily. Just as he easily beat Christine O’Donnell four years ago, just as easily as he would have beaten Mike Castle four years ago. Now, will you RINOs shut the fuck up and knock off your stuck pig squealing about Christine O’Donnell? And while you’re at it, go eat your own dog food.

FLORIDA

Don’t cry for Charlie Crist.  He’s got plenty of more parties he can run on and lose.  Libertarian, Tea, Green, Rent Is Too Damn High, for example.

No medical marijuana for you, Florida.  Which is too bad for Charlie Crist’s future political ambitions, that the future electorate of the state won’t be floating high.

Lethargic black and Hispanic turnout makes life easy for the red team.

GEORGIA

Lethargic black turnout makes life easy for the red team.

The polling showed that, while both Nathan Deal and David Perdue had narrow leads, both were under 50%, and both were headed to runoffs.

Really?

I keep reading propaganda that the non-white turnout in Georgia was at a record high.  First off, the election results belie that, second, the raw voter turnout numbers belie that.

Maybe one factor is that since Jimmy Carter and Sam Nunn both are yesterday’s news, running a grandson of the former and a daughter of the latter up the flag pole wasn’t going to work.

The whole rap against Nathan Deal was that he was “incompetent” during a surprise snowstorm this past winter, which dumped a few inches of snow on Atlanta at just the wrong time of the day.  Of course, Nathan Deal controls the weather, and he was so sadistic as not to teach Atlanta drivers how to drive in snow properly.  That kind of thing goes under the “shit happens” file, not the “political incompetence” file.

HAWAII

I guess.

IDAHO

Risch, Otter. Will someone please do something (above board) about that Raul Labrador?

INDIANA

No Congressional flips. No important statewide races. At least Indianans can be excited by the oncoming basketball season.

IOWA

Joni Ernst, Terry Branstad.  As expected.

Your 24/7 coverage of the 2016 Iowa Caucuses begins…NOW.

KANSAS

I did my Kris Kobach gloating in the meta-analysis, so that’s already been covered.

All throughout the fall, the polling showed that Kris Kobach was doing better than Pat Roberts, who in turn was doing better than Samnesty Brownback.  The only question is this:  Where was sea level?  At worst, I thought that sea level would be between Kobach and Roberts.  As the fall went on, and more and more people (including me) sucked it up and got in line behind the old useless man who doesn’t even live in Kansas, because in spite of it all he has a solid record on immigration, and the fake independent has always been an open borders hack, I thought sea level would be between Roberts and Brownback.  Like I said in the preview, unlike Kobach and Roberts, Brownback to me was a take-or-leave five’ll-getya-ten proposition.

When the media declared for Pat Roberts on Tuesday night, I knew Kris Kobach had also won.  In the end, sea level was underneath all three of them.  And also, Kobach 59%, Roberts 53%, Brownback 50%, confirming the polls’ contention that K > R > B.

Whatever Samnesty Brownback did wrong as Governor that gave him the scare of his life this year, he should probably fix.  Though whatever that his has probably taken him out of Presidential contention, though it’s not as if a desperate country was turning its longing eyes to Sam Brownback.  Remember he ran for President in 2008 and went nowhere.

KENTUCKY

There were polls through the late summer and early fall that showed Allison Grimes leading slightly.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

How to explain Bitch McConnell’s 15-point win?  I need not look any further than my own city.  Bill Clay, who represented MO-1 in Congress from 1968 to 2000, his son succeed him in 2000 and is still there, once wrote a book called Just Permanent Interests.  One of his famous lines is that black people “have no permanent friends or permanent enemies, just permanent interests.”

Northern Kentucky and western Kentucky was always going to be red.  The big wild card was eastern Kentucky.  And why did most of those counties go red?  It’s not because the people there feel any kinship with McConnell from a personality, sociological, class, cultural or life history standpoint.  It’s because the other choice on the ballot represents a national political party that wants to shut down the only viable industry left in that part of the state, and also the neighboring state to the east, which I’ll get to in due alphabetical order.

Just permanent interests, that’s all.

LOUISIANA

There will be a runoff, which Bill Cassidy will win.  The Democrat brass has taken all their money out of the state.

Louisiana’s other Senator is running for Governor next year.  While he’s the Senate’s second best immigration stalwart, you know who the best is, and his presence in the Senate will be missed, I think being a Governor puts him in better position for the Presidency if he so desires.  Either that, or he just wants to come home.  David Vitter has had an interesting career following behind that other David from Louisiana, that being David Duke, Vitter winning where Duke couldn’t.  When Duke abandoned his state legislative seat to run for Senate, Vitter replaced him.  Duke of course would make the Senate runoff in 1990 and the Governor runoff in 1991 but lost both times.  When Duke tried his comeback in 1998 for the seat that House Speaker-Designate Bob Livingston resigned from, Vitter was in that race and won it.  Now, Vitter is in the Senate and is perhaps one election away from being Governor, and if he gets that, he’ll have accomplished everything Duke set out to do but couldn’t.

MAINE

Runaround Sue easily wins another Senate term. Incumbent Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had been trailing in some polls during the fall, won re-election by a narrower margin.  I’m much happier about LePage.

MARYLAND

I told you there would be some shocking D to R flip this year that would blow everyone’s socks off.

I was expecting it to be on the Senate level.

When I read the news that the Maryland Democrat Party was sending race arsonist agitprop mailers to black zip codes and precincts in the state, I remarked here that the Democrat, current Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a mulatto messiah hopeychanger and a “Mini-Me” of Obama, didn’t have the comfortable lead over his Republican opponent, former Ehrlich administration cabinet secretary Larry Hogan, that the polls suggested.

I said here during the preview that I would vote Hogan, no matter who or what he is, just to knock Anthony Brown off the mulatto messiah hopeychanger Presidential track.

I never expected that a simple majority of Maryland voters would take that advice seriously.

Just for the record, Hogan’s hand-picked running mate and thus Lt. Gov.-elect, is black. Just like the last Republican Governor of Maryland, the aforementioned Bob Ehrlich, who picked Michael Steele.

Hogan’s win did not have down ballot coattails; no D to R Congressional flips, the only red teamer in the bunch remains Andy Harris from the coastal district. That means all our old House Democrat favorites are back for another term, including everyone’s favorite, Elijah Cumstain.

Hogan’s win does, however, take a lot of wind out of outgoing Gov. Martin O’Malley’s Presidential campaign. Not that it ever had much wind to begin with.

One more object lesson of this? You should know it by heart by now:

Lethargic black turnout makes life easy for the red team.

Driving that point home?  Hogan won 32 precincts in Baltimore City.

MASSACHUSETTS

Charlie Baker was the 2010 Republican nominee for Governor but lost to Deval Patrick in his own re-election bid. Baker tried and succeeded this year, beating the Democrat nominee Martha Coakley, who as you recall was herself the Democrat nominee in the special election in the early 2010 special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy, of course she lost to Scott Brown. I guess we can take this to mean that whatever “it” is, Martha Coakley doesn’t have it.

Ed Mahhhhhhhkey wins re-election easily to the Senate.

The state’s Congressional delegation remains all blue, in spite of some Republican hopes for one or two flips.

MICHIGAN

After a lot of initial enthusiasm for Terri Lynn Land on the immigration matter, her position became more and more open borders as the weeks went on, and with it went her chance of winning.

Rickroller Snyder?  Meh.

MINNESOTA

Landslide Stuart Smalley and Mark Dayton won with larger margins than they won with six and four years ago, respectively.  A lot of people thought that Franken going down may be the surprise D (DFL) to R flip of the night.

Tom Emmer, whom Dayton narrowly defeated four years ago to become Governor, will replace Michele Bachmann in MN-6.  I don’t know that much about him, but I doubt it’s an improvement.

MISSISSIPPI

Travis Childers got 16% of the white vote.  Which is very high for a Democrat running in Mississippi these days.  Only because there were enough Chris McDaniel supporters who still had hard feelings, and Childers signed a Numbers USA pledge that Thad Cochran did not.  But that did not preclude the inevitable.  Cochran still won by 23 because blacks stayed home, you know, those great voters who showed up big time in the primary runoff to save him, even though I don’t and never have thought that was the deciding factor.

MONTANA

Senate D to R flip, R holds the at-large House seat, as expected.  A proposition to do away with same day voter fraud failed.

NEBRASKA

Instead of floor speeches, Ben Sasse will give TED Talks on the Senate floor.

Minimum wage to be increased, and the Congressional district that contains Omaha was only one of three R to D flips.

Pistol Pete Ricketts?  Don’t know enough.

NEVADA

Brian Sandoval gets about three times as many votes as the Democrat, so he will remain as Governor.

NV-4, the Bundy Ranch district, did flip from (black) D to R.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

This is the one we really needed but didn’t get.  As Mickey Kaus noted before the vote, the cause of immigration patriotism needed a Democrat incumbent who voted for Gang Bangers of Eight in a light blue state being turned out by someone who made immigration his keynote issue.

In other Granite State news, in 2010, both of the state’s House district flipped from D to R.  In 2012, they both flipped back.  This year, one of them flipped back again.  The one that didn’t was one where the Republicans nominated a Hispanic.

NEW JERSEY

With Anthony Brown failing in Maryland, Cory Booker is no doubt about it the next Democrat mulatto messiah hopeychanger, unless some U.S. Attorneys get to interested in his former business as Newark Mayor.  And I’m shocked that the Republican running on amnesty, open borders and Puerto Rico statehood didn’t win.

NEW MEXICO

I was thinking that Allan Feh toppling the other Udall would possibly be the night’s surprise, but that was too much to ask.

Susana Martinez, easily.  Expect to hear a lot more of her name next year and half of the year after as possible running mate material.

NEW YORK

Andrew Cuomo, but only by 14 points, not even half of what he won by four years ago.  He’s a 2016 contender, but he came out of Tuesday in a weaker position.  As far as that goes, I have one more name to discuss, when I hit “V.”

NY-1 (farther Long Island) and NY-24 (Syracuse and surrounding) flipped from D to R.  I noticed that Michael Grimm, the Congressman from Staten Island, in spite of being under indictment, Obama’s USAG nominee Loretta Lynch was heretofore part of the legal team trying to string him up, won re-election fairly easily.

NORTH CAROLINA

Thom Tillis pulls it out, and he’s a Roverrated/Chamber Pot of Commerce/cheap labor lobby whore.  Yet Scott Brown didn’t?  Kay Hagan did better in the liberal big cities than she did in 2008 when she toppled Elizabeth Dole.  How can that happen?  You should know the answer by now.  Lethargic black turnout helped red team have an easy night.

Renee Ellmers School Glue is back for another term, the open borders hack her.  Of course her Democrat opponent was former American Idoler Clay Aiken, so yuck yuck.

NORTH DAKOTA

I’ve got nothing.

OHIO

John Kasich’s Democrat opponent was the Cuyahoga County Executive.  Since the Democrats nominated such a quality well placed individual, it prevented this race from being a 30-point all-but-two-county blowout for Kasich.

Ummm…errr….

Kasich won Cuyahoga County.

Remember, Cuyahoga County and Cleveland is where all the Obama Phone people live, and that’s the county where all the black elderly woman turnout swung Ohio to Obama, and once Ohio went for Obama, that’s when it was all over in 2012.

Now I’m worried that Kasich is going to get a head of steam over this and run for President in 2016.  Remember, he ran for President in 2000, doing so from only having been elected to Congress, albeit running the Budget Committee for the six years prior.  If you don’t remember that he ran for President in 2000, it’s for a good reason:  Because he went nowhere.

Though like I said in the preview, he could well win the Democrat nomination for President.

Congressional delegation…no flips…remains 12-4 R.

OKLAHOMA

Both Senate seats up, Jim Inhofe on its regular cycle, and he won, and the seat vacated by the resigning Tom Coburn, the only drama for it was earlier this year during the primary, the winner of which, James Lankford, won easily on Tuesday.

The whole House and Senate delegation is red.

Did you know that Governor Mary Fallin was once on a bit of shaky ground for re-election?  When you only win by 15, yet both Senate candidates on the ballot that same day wins by 39, a 15 point win does seems sorta lame-a-rooney.

OREGON

Jeff Merkley easily for Senate re-election.  Monica Webhy was just what the RINOs ordered.  Again, RINOs, tell me when you’re going to eat your own dog food.

Jeff Kitzhaber wins re-election as Governor, but far more narrowly.

But the star of the night in Oregon was Measure 88 going down to defeat by 2-1.  It is a win for immigration patriotism in a blue state.  It got more votes than anything on the statewide ballot, including other statewide ballot measures and statewide political candidate races, and the only county it won was Multnomah (Portland), and even there, Merkley and Kitzhaber way outperformed the Yes on 88 vote.  Proof that there are a fair percentage of white liberal immigration patriots.

PENNSYLVANIA

If Tom Corbett lost because of Jerry Sandusky, then it’s an eternal political slander.  From what I can tell, Corbett was the first person who had any real power to do something about it who actually did something about it when he got wind that Sandusky was molesting boys, back when he was state AG.

Lou Barletta won another term in PA-11 by a 2-1 margin, such a landslide is nice to see.  BTW, when did the district that Jack Murtha once represent turn red?

RHODE ISLAND

Rhode Island Republicans, there’s a chink in your Gubernatorial armor.

The Raimondo that is Governor-Elect, is definitely not Justin Raimondo.  I can assure you of that.

Robert Healey was the nominee of the Moderate Cave Man Party.

SOUTH CAROLINA

As it was on primary day in South Carolina, with both Senate seats on the ballot, Tim Scott outperformed Lindsey Grahamnesty.  And it wasn’t because of black voters, who again had a low turnout.  Dillon, Darlington, Barnwell:  The three counties that Scott carried that Graham didn’t, all three are majority but not overwhelmingly white.  However, most of the black belt counties voted for both Democrats.

Nimrata Randhawa (“Nikki Haley”) had a much easier time this year than four years ago.

Before I let this go, there are a lot of people who should know this but don’t know what is meant by the political-rhetorical device “the first black to win (insert public office here) in (insert southern state here) since Reconstruction.”  A phrase dragged out a lot with Tim Scott’s win on Tuesday.  During Reconstruction, the Union military occupation of Dixie from 1865 to 1876, most whites were not allowed to vote.  The only people who could vote were blacks or domestic traitors or Northern carpetbaggers.  Therefore, it’s easy to see how a lot of blacks won offices like Senate, Governor, Congress, and what not.  After the fortuitous circumstance of the 1876 Presidential election, and the end of military occupation (“Reconstruction”), Southern states restored sanity, and therefore, blacks suddenly couldn’t win elections.  What is meant now by that phrase is that a black person running in the South was able to win an election with enough white votes.

SOUTH DAKOTA

Mike Rounds was in so much trouble that the NRSC had to ship money to South Dakota that it really wanted to spend elsewhere.

If winning by 20 is “trouble,” then I wonder what “safe” is.

Governor Dennis Daugaard and at-large Congresswoman Kristi Noem (YUM) win by 2-1 or greater margins.

TENNESSEE

Combining Gov. Bill Haslam and Sen. Lamar Alexander together, their two county maps would have been all red but for Davidson (Nashville) voting for the quixotic Democrat running against Alexander.

But then, reality check:  Lamar Alexander, as in Gang Bangers of Eight.

Oh God.

The state is now constitutionally prohibited from implementing an income tax.

TEXAS

Greg Abbott become Governor-Elect the moment Rickroller Perry announced his retirement last year.

Anyone who did not believe that was lying to one’s own self or to other people or both.

There was never a poll that I saw that showed Abbott having anything less than a 13-point lead.

So how did it come to pass that there came to be this cult slash alternate universe bubble around this pure media and feminist-activist-left creation that calls herself “Wendy Davis?”  It might be for the same inexplicable reason that Pet Rocks were popular in the 1970s.  Steve Sailer thinks it was because the Democrats didn’t understand the solidarity of white Texas voters, not on Mississippi-Alabama levels, but well enough for red team to win handily at least.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.  Or rather, the more detached from reality the delusions, the harder it is to accept reality when the bubble bursts.

I won’t amuse you with all the stupid still-detached-from-reality excuses that Wendy Davis supporters and sycophants and even the failed candidate herself are trucking out in the postmortem of her bubble bursting.  One is crazier than the next.  One thing I will note is that in their attempt to state that Abbott really didn’t win women because he didn’t win black, Hispanic and single white women, that proves that when the left uses the word “women” in a political sense, they mean everyone but married white women.

Needless to say, if that milieu just accepted reality from the get-go, they wouldn’t be making asses of themselves in public today.

Here’s a stat that Don Surber dug out of the abyss:  Of those who are “mostly illegal sometimes legal” on the aborticide issue, 86% of them voted for Greg Abbott.  Of those whoa re “mostly legal sometimes illegal,” 44% voted for Abbott.  Don Surber’s point is that Wendy Davis took the absolutist always legal position, and those of that position and those of the absolutist always illegal position had the same percentage vote for Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott, respectively, meaning they canceled each other out.

Here’s a stat I noticed:  Greg Abbott’s 59% of the vote bests any of Rickroller Perry’s percentages in his three wins for Governor, 57%, 39% and 55% in 2002, 2006 and 2010, respectively.

The person who will replace Wendy Davis in the State Senate is a woman who is the complete political antithesis of her.

John Cornyn won re-election to the Senate, though I’m not thrilled about that.

Louie Gohmert is making noises about striking King Boehner.  I hope he can kill him, metaphorically speaking.  Because, as we all know, you don’t strike a king unless you can kill a king.

UTAH

The only thing of note is Mia Love, who only won her race narrowly, compared to Utah’s other three districts, which were all red team blowouts.  Maybe enough voters in UT-4 weren’t ready for a real life episode of Scandal.  Or maybe the overcompensating for black guilt pathology among Mormons isn’t as strong as I thought; realizing that Mia Love could not have joined the Mormon Church as late as the day I was born.

Fox News Channel has no fewer than six black woman on-air personalities, and all five of them are married to white men, Stacey Dash has had multiple white husbands.  Mia Love?  Married to a white man.  Since WM/BF relationships are the most rare of all the interracial possibilities, that’s a cluster, not a coincidence.

VERMONT

No candidate for Governor, including incumbent Democrat Peter Shumlin, got above 50%.  Which means the new session of the state legislature will decide.

Time enough for Brian Dubie to ride back into town?

VIRGINIA

Okay, Mark Warner.  Did you just want a little excitement in your life?  Is that why, in spite of your opponent running the worst RINO-style Senate candidacy maybe ever, that you wanted to run an even worse campaign just to make it close just so you can have some thrills?

Special Ed Gillespie is on record for wanting to septuple legal immigration.  Mark Warner vote for Gang Bangers of Eight.  Scott Brown made immigration patriotism his keynote issue.  Jeanne Shaheen voted for Gang Bangers of Eight.  So how in the HELL did Gillespie come way closer to toppling Warner than Brown did Shaheen?

Other than that which I spouted so often in this review, my local review and my meta-analysis, the state having lots of that racial demographic.

What this means is that Mark Warner, who I thought was the prime dark horse for Democrats in 2016, someone who I thought was a great value bet, knowing that some British book was laying 85-1 on him to be the Democrat nominee for President, can forget about running for President.  If you wound up making that bet, sorry ’bout that.

I don’t think that Gillespie’s latching onto the Washington Redskins issue in the fourth quarter had much to do with this race being so close in the end.  The statistical evidence is that Warner fell a lot further than Gillespie gained, if you compare the early fall polls to the actual results.  What really happened is that Warner’s campaign was bad, and Warner himself was dogged by a scandal that broke during campaign season relating to someone Democrat in the Virginia State Senate.

With Martin O’Malley, Andrew Cuomo and Mark Warner now in weaker positions after Tuesday than before, this only helps HRC.  Which is why I’m not on board with Rand Paul tweeting #HillarysLosers all over the place.  All the losers she endorsed won’t matter once 2016 gets here.

VA-7 is now official for Dave Brat.

WASHINGTON STATE

There were two contradictory 2A-related issue initiatives, and if they would have both passed, it would have created a legal paradox that could have destroyed the whole universe…though we might have been lucky that the damage was only confined to our own galaxy.  (What a relief.)  Doesn’t matter, because the one that should have won didn’t and the one that shouldn’t have won did.

WEST VIRGINIA

As late as four years ago and change, Shelley Moore Capito was the only Republican in the state’s entire House and Senate delegation, three House and two Senate.

Now, she’s the first Senate Republican from West Virginia since the Charleston was popular (and I don’t mean Charleston, W.V.), and the only Democrat in the delegation is Sen. Joe Manchin, who may change parties to make it a clean sweep.  Though I think all that will happen is that he’ll vote with Republicans a lot but not change parties.

Nick Rahall, a 19-term incumbent Democrat from the state’s southern Congressional district, has now been forcefully retired.  If one combines 2010 and 2014, and considers all the long tenure House Democrats that were either defeated or retired in those two cycles, the House Democrat caucus lost a whole lot of collective tenure and experience, along with losing a lot of numbers.

As was expected, the State House went from D to R control, though it went more dramatically R than expected, going from 53-47 D to 64-36 R.  Unexpected was the State Senate, which started the day 24-10 D but ended the day 17-17 tied.  The next day, one of the Democrats changed parties.

Again, just permanent interests.

WISCONSIN

In 2010, Scott Walker won his first campaign for Governor by 6 points.

In 2012, in an attempt to recall him, he staved off being recalled, beating the Democrat running against him (who was also his 2010 opponent) by 6 points.

In 2014, he wins again in the normal election cycle of this office by…you’ll never guess.

He is nothing if not consistent.

Now, just don’t get any Presidential ideas, Mr. Walker.

Not as if this wasn’t expected, but my favorite member of the Wisconsin Congressional delegation, Jim Sensenbrenner, won another term by a better than 2-1 margin.

WYOMING

A whole lot of red, as expected.  We could have done without Matt Mead.