November 9, 2022

Last night's elections were the first since this site began. Consequently, I walked around yesterday with a knot in my stomach wondering if the results (and, just as important, responses to the results) would tear down in an hour what I'd built over the year. I shouldn't have worried.

Odd as it sounds, in the spring I started looking forward to the midterms. The best arguments for each side's positions had me forgetting the ad hominem attacks from each side's base. I was reminded how independent voters -- the voters who decide elections -- aren't interested in attacks. If anything, they're repelled by them. So my thinking was, despite all the talk of extremism, this midterm would ultimately elevate candidates closer to the middle. Despite my late misgivings, that's exactly what happened last night.

After an election, the losers always recalibrate. What's interesting about last night is it wasn't a particular party that lost (though Republicans are surely disappointed). It was a particular candidate -- the extreme one. Stacey Abrams wouldn't concede her previous loss and lost again. Don Bolduc wouldn't concede Trump's loss and he lost, too. Hopefully, future candidates will take note. And hopefully more people will gravitate to the kind of commentary that made this election far less fraught for me than past elections. Apparently, there's something to this.