A red trickle rather than a red wave.

The internet is filling up with takes on last night's election.  Despite it being some days or weeks before we see the real dimensions of the outcome.  Possibly sooner, but also possibly as late as December 6th.

I have two observations I want to hold onto to test and see if they hold up.

Republicans have had a serious strategic challenge which they had no visible path towards resolving.  Regardless of whether you are a fan or critic of Trump, I think it indisputable that he showed an outsider could beat the nomenklatura at their own game, that he was surprisingly accomplished, especially for an outsider and especially after the nomenklatura closed ranks against him, and that while part of his success was an unbreakable willingness to fight, that many of his fights were (and are) unnecessary.

As the only Republican willing to stand up to the mainstream media, the academy, the Deep State and to achieve some tactical wins, it was hard to refute that his reflexive pugilism might be an indispensable necessity, even when it led to needless conflict.  

The goal is always to win the war.  It would be desirable to win the war by winning all the battles but that is rarely how it plays out.  And because time and resources are scarce, not all battles are worth fighting.  Winning is a matter of picking only the battles which are necessary and winning at least those.  And it is unclear that Trump has that capacity to choose battles.  "Always fight" has worked for him but it is unclear that it is a good strategy for the Republican Party.  Fight hard and fight to win, certainly.  But fight everywhere all the time?  Perhaps not.

And I wonder whether last night's results might not have helped the Republican Party over the Trump wing?  His candidates seem on average to have fared poorly and might have cost the Party the realistic chance of seizing back both the House and the Senate, and a strong lead among Governors.  

The final results are still outstanding and perhaps the picture will get more muddied.  But if indeed the efficacy of Trump is dented, then the possibility of a more institutional, less personality driven Party might be to the Party's benefit.  We'll see.

The second observation is that this might have been an election less about individual races and more about fundamental systemic conditions.  Going in to the campaign season, say about June, there were four things that were disparately acknowledged. 

1)  The party of the President usually suffers in an off-year election cycle such as the 2022 races.  Theoretically, the Democrat Party was anticipating at least some losses.  

2)  The economic headwinds (inflation, stock market losses, recession) are all traditional forces which should have acted against the Democrats in this election.  As we approached the election, Democrat Party concerns rose with inflation.

3)  The party with the most number of open seats is most at risk.  In this cycle, that was the Republican Party with way more Senate seats to defend, several of them open from retirements.  Incumbents are hard to beat and open seats easier to win.  At the beginning of the campaign back in June, there were plenty of scenarios in which the Republicans might gain a weak majority in the House but lose 1-3 critical Senate seats, leaving the Senate much more securely in Democrat hands.

4)  There are Party demographic forces.  Both parties depend on a pipeline of electable party members and candidates out of their States and out of their federal bench.  That pipeline will have old doyennes and sages but also has to have young bucks as well.  For Democrats, the challenge of the past six years is that the eight years of the Obama presidency more than decimated that pipeline.  The number of members 35-55 years old and with more than a couple of complex campaigns under their belt dwindled dramatically.  In addition, they lost control over the majority of states, constricting that pipeline of candidates as well.  Consequently, they are a bimodally distributed party with a gerontocracy in secure control and a thin bench of experienced candidates.  The Republicans don't have that problem.  

So three forces, off-cycle election, bad economic performance, and thin bench of qualified candidates disadvantaged the Democrats while the open seat profile advantaged Democrats.  

Again, these are systemic forces which are broadly in effect independent of individual candidates and races.  Since they worked at cross purposes this year, at different points since June, there has been, at different times, rising and falling expectations of success in both parties.  

I wouldn't conclude that the open seat exposure was a dominating force.  But possibly the exposure from open seats in combination with the picking of candidates based on Trump loyalty rather than electability might have been the scenario which manifested as a red trickle rather than a red wave.

But there are still results to come in which might change that assessment.