This is a subject I was harping on in my posts and on social media for the last few days and we’re drawing closer to having an answer. We still don’t know if Donald Trump will win a second term in the White House, but what was even more important was the fate of the Senate. Without the majority in the upper chamber, even with a Trump victory, the dynamic engine that’s been filling judicial openings across the country with constitutional originalists would be slowed to a crawl. Similarly, if the chamber is turned over to Chuck Schumer and his buddies, a potential Joe Biden presidency would run wild, refilling the courts with liberals and socialists. If anything, the fate of yesterday’s Senate races was even more important than the race for the White House. So how did we do?

Looking at the state of play this morning, things aren’t looking bad for the GOP. There are several pleasant surprises in the making, barring some huge surge of ballots that are “found” later.

Dan Sullivan seems to be solidly holding his seat in Alaska for the moment, but they’re barely halfway through counting. In Georgia, unless there’s a significant blue shift today, David Perdue may hold on with more than 50% over Jon Ossoff. A similar situation is brewing in North Carolina, where Thom Tillis is hanging on by a couple of points over his opponent with 93% of the vote counted when I just looked. Also, Steve Daines appears to have locked in another term in Montana.

Kentucky must be a huge disappointment for Democrats who threw everything including the kitchen sink into a bid to unseat Cocaine Mitch. He wound up blowing Amy McGrath out of the water and the Libertarian that some Democrats were trying to bolster in the final week of the race made virtually no impact. Similarly, Lindsey Graham had looked like he was in some trouble for a while in South Carolina, but he’s sitting on a double-digit lead this morning with almost 90% of the votes counted.

One of the bigger surprises is probably Joni Ernst in Iowa. She had been left for dead in some of the late-stage polling, but she came charging back last night and locked up another term. That’s one bullet dodged. And while they are still counting ballots in Maine, at least for the moment it looks like Susan Collins may hang on by her fingernails and defy expectations yet again. She’s just barely above 50% this morning. If she slips below that threshold, the state’s highly corrupt “ranked-choice” voting system will likely steal her seat away from her even if she finishes with the most votes.

There were some flips, however, and there might be more. Going with the bad news first, Arizona and Colorado have switched from red to blue, with Mark Kelly and John Hickenlooper joining the upper chamber. Making up for that, Republican Tommy Tuberville easily knocked out incumbent Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama. Beyond that, John James has a slender lead in Michigan, potentially setting the GOP up for another flip, but they’ve still got a lot of write-in ballots to count. If he wins and Thom Tillis hangs on, the GOP has an excellent shot at holding the majority, though several races are still in flux.

As I said at the top, this is the most crucial feature of the 2020 election. The Republicans were defending a lot of seats this year and the potential was absolutely there for Democrats to surge. But it looks like we may have dodged that particular bullet. If so, the conservative disaster that most of the MSM was obviously praying for may have been averted.