Well.

That was weird.

"This may be the strangest election I've ever seen."

Steven Moore nailed it on Fox News. Despite 75% of voters saying country is on 'wrong track' and majority 'angry' about inflation/economy, not a single incumbent governor or senator gets flipped?

How does that happen? 🤔

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) November 9, 2022

Before I muse upon results elsewhere in the country, let me revisit what happened in my home state of Florida – the utter and complete annihilation of the Democratic Party as a power here.

A thing of beauty to behold.

Ron DeSantis, who, at every turn, has performed magnificently safeguarding his citizens’ best interests, triumphed from Key West to the farthest reaches of the Panhandle, and flipped one of the deepest blue bastions to dark red on his journey for good measure. He crushed Crist, winning by 20 percentage points and pulling a million five hundred thousand votes more.

Marco Rubio was almost as dominant, vanquishing Val Demmings with over 57% of the vote. South FL also came through with much-needed Congressional flips, adding four new seats to the GOP House total to start the evening off.

Matt Gaetz kept his house seat with his largest margin of victory yet – almost 68% of the vote.

Republicans also locked up the state house in an unassailable fashion.

NEW: Republicans take supermajority in both chambers of the Florida state legislature

— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) November 9, 2022

With a huge sigh of relief, Florida has also managed to avoid becoming a statistic of the pernicious usual effects of immigrant influx from other states. Not only did these recent blue state refugees not bring their liberal voting patterns with them, they appeared to have repudiated them completely. Freedom will do that to a liberated psyche, once it gets over the shock of no longer being in thrall.

Oh, it was a good night here. And over quickly, even with two different time zones.

Florida can count.

In North Carolina, the snail’s pace of returns kept the senate race between Dem Cheri Beasley and Rep Ted Budd a nail-biter for quite a while, but Budd prevailed in the end. That preserved what would turn out to be a much-needed GOP senate seat. None of the house races that were polling closely went the GOP’s way (Sort of became the theme for half the country from that point on, no?) but, in a happy surprise, Republicans swept the N.C. state Supreme Court.

Huge win for the GOP: They've flipped the North Carolina supreme court.

This will have huge implications for redistricting and civil rights cases gonig forward, including likely enable the GOP to gerrymander the state for 2024.

— Taniel (@Taniel) November 9, 2022

It took so dang long for them to call things, I never did get my glass of vino. But I settled in to watch the rest of it and…what the heck?! I’m wondering if blue-state voters all have Stockholm Syndrome or something. How do you suffer miserably through life under a Whitmer or a Cuomo/Hochul…and then vote for MORE? It’s not as if everyone else in the U.S. was just as miserable – you could see that life could be different than the prison you were being held in. Yet, given the chance to change direction, they chose the status quo.

THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES.

Granted, there might be a reason there were fewer rational voters for guys like Zeldin…

Overheard: Lee Zeldin’s win margin was down electing DeSantis

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) November 9, 2022

I get the drift. A ton of those folks – who could – have already left New York. What a mess. Same with Whitmer. At least New York flipped some blue seats to the red side, as did New Jersey, with their one contribution.

In Connecticut’s CT-05, the rising young Republican I profiled earlier, George Logan, has taken the lead with 72% of the vote in. Hope that holds, as well as another new GOP star’s lead in Oregon’s OR-05, Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

As for Arizona, well, the voting machine shenanigans/malarkey show started right out the gate there, and with the national media all prepping Kari Lake beforehand as an “election denier,” it doesn’t change the fact that it was a freaking monstrous Maricopa mess from the second the doors opened. Again, your lying eyes didn’t see what was happening, right?

Dudes. We were all watching Arizona melt down ALL day.

Perhaps you should rephrase. pic.twitter.com/okOT25RuCn

— Beege 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) November 9, 2022

Supposedly on track to have it all counted by Friday, which is an excruciating, inexcusable wait.

So…here we are.

Treading water in the shallow end.

Nary a kowabunga wave to be ridden anywhere.

So weird.

***

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