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It was a referendum on Trump. He lost.

America came to its senses Tuesday. Not 100%, but definitively enough. It defeated lots of Trumpy election deniers, supported everyone’s right to control their own body, and reaffirmed confidence in relatively civil discourse. This was a referendum election, one the Republicans were favored to win big because that is what happens in a mid-term election when your party does not control the White House, the President’s approval rating is low, inflation is north of 8%, and the minority party has gerrymandered House districts. It was above all a referendum on Trump. He lost.

The other news

That was the good news. The bad news is that the alternatives are at least as bad, if not worse, even when less repulsive. Trump will now be losing his grip on the Republican Party. But he is losing it in part to people who sound more sane and comport themselves with more dignity. Florida Governor De Santis is the big Republican winner of the night, by about 20%. He is a vote suppressing, gun-advocating, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, dog-whistling racist.

But he has somehow created the appearance of distance between himself and Trump, who views De Santis as his main rival within the Republican party. Trump calls him “de sanctimonious,” which is the only five syllable word Donald has ever uttered. The Florida Governor is in fact a less repulsive version of Trump: all for lowering taxes on the rich, cracking down on non-existent crime waves, and preventing the Federal government from protecting the country from epidemics.

The last shoe has not yet fallen

The Senate is still up for grabs. There are absentee votes to be counted in close-run Nevada and Arizona. The Georgia race will be decided in a run-off. The Democrats have a pretty good chance of winning at least 2 out of the 3 of these, which would give them the majority in a 50/50 split because the Vice President can preside and vote when needed.

The House is almost surely in Republican hands, but only by a handful of votes. Particularly galling for the Democrats is the loss of 4 seats in heavily Blue New York State, where however suburbs and rural counties tend red.

A Republican House with a Democratic Senate and President won’t be able to get any of its preferred partisan legislation passed. But it doesn’t plan to. It will focus on investigations of Biden Administration officials and of his son, Hunter. They won’t find much, but remember the Benghazi hearings. They found nothing of note but damaged Hillary Clinton.

The Republican House will also hold significant power over the budget, which it will need to pass. Ukraine aid and social spending will be among their targets. The so-called “budget ceiling” (the government’s credit card limit) will be reach in 2023, at which point Republicans will threaten to close the government. It’s not a threat that has helped them electorally, but it does often shift some finances.

The American election is like Kherson

The election outcome is a bit like the Russian retreat from Kherson in southern Ukraine. The victors are clear: Biden in the former and Ukraine in the later. But the victories are far from complete. The enemy lives to fight another day, perhaps from a modestly improved position.