After last night

Herewith ten miscellaneous thoughts in the form of bullet points (focused almost entirely on candidates rather than issues) amounting to footnotes on the midterm elections.

• I would like to hold myself accountable for my comments on yesterday’s races over the past several months. I hope to have informed readers with fact-based analysis rather than misled you with wishful thinking or hopes and fears. If you think I led you astray, I’d appreciate hearing from you via our Email Us link at the top of the page.

• I commented on the Senate races in a series of posts under the heading “Save the Senate.” I would like to note Josh Hawley’s victory over the wily and deceptive Claire McCaskill in Missouri. This time around, she was unable to choose her Republican opponent. I met him this past January and found him to be a brilliant and extraordinarily impressive candidate. At the age of 38, he is a star in the making.

• I previewed the North Dakota Senate race in “Not high on Heitkamp” after I met Rep. Kevin Cramer, Heitkamp’s opponent, in Minneapolis. I liked him immensely. He is what he appears to be, a forthcoming and decent man who is also a knowledgeable supporter of the American alliance with Israel. I am thrilled that he prevailed over Heitkamp.

• Saturday Night Live disgraced itself with a supposed (but certainly disgusting) joke at the expense of wounded former Navy SEAL and Texas congressional candidate Dan Crenshaw. The Daily Caller reports that Crenshaw won big.

• As I write, Republicans seem to have done about as well as could reasonably have been hoped in the Senate races. How did they do it? Burgess Everett and James Arkin take a look in the Politico story “‘Pretty ballsy’: How McConnell and Trump blew away Senate Democrats.”

• In one of the night’s biggest disappointments, John James lost narrowly in Michigan to Debbie Stabenow. He was by far the superior candidate. We need his like in Congress. I hope he will return as a candidate in the 2020 cycle. Next time around we will know to jump on board early.

• In another of last night’s biggest disappointments, Republican candidate Elizabeth Heng lost by nine points to incumbent Democrat Jim Costa in California’s 16th Congressional District. We jumped on board early but it wasn’t enough.

• Scott Walker had a great run as governor of Wisconsin over the past eight years. By any reasonable reckoning he deserved reelection, but he fell short the third time around. I am grateful for his demonstration of how much good state policy can accomplish under steadfast leadership.

• I think the man with the best name on the ballot yesterday was Oregon gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler. He was also by far the superior candidate in his race against incumbent Kathleen Brown. Mark Hemingway previewed the race in the Weekly Standard article “Surprisingly competitive.” I hope Knute Buehler will take another whack at it as well.

• Tom Lifson chronicles MSNBC’s various equipment malfunctions covering Florida’s Gillum-DeSantis gubernatorial election last night.

That makes ten points, I think, which is where I would like to leave it for the moment.

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