So much for my cautiously optimistic Senate scenario. We were run over by the CW last night. I knew things were going terribly wrong when Ed Gillespie led in Virginia for most of the evening until suffering a narrow defeat.

I’m usually pretty good at picking Senate races. Even as a young man, I knew 1980 was going to be a disaster. It was much worse on the Senate side that year as the Democrats lost such distinguished veteran Senators as McGovern, Church, Magnuson, Nelson, and Bayh. I’m sure I’m missing someone but I’d rather riff than consult with Mr. Google. I lied about that. I just looked and it *was* a bigger disaster than last night, a loss of 12 seats.

In other bad news on the Gubernatorial front this time: the fraudster was re-elected in Florida, a Goper won in Maryland of all places, Martha Coakley blew another one, Governor Deadeyes will be running for President, and Athenae joins the bad right wing Governors club in Illinois. Oh, I nearly forgot, Wendy Davis lost by a bigger margin and got fewer votes than Bill White did against Rick Perry in 2010. The only good thing about that result is that it sends the “demography is destiny” crowd to the woodshed.

There are two bit of semi-good news to be gleaned from the wreckage. First, the GOP will make a mess of things in the Senate: the batshit crazy caucus will be in the saddle and overplay their hand. The gridlock will continue, punctuated by vetoes, investigations, and impeachment threats that will backfire. Second, the Senatorial map in 2016 is just as bad for the GOP as this years was for the Democrats. Oh yeah, and Scott Brown is looking for a new state to run in. How about Alaska, dude?

As long as the Democratic base only turns out in force for Presidential elections this will continue to happen. We need to capture the spirit of  1986 and 2006 in off year elections. It would also be a good idea for candidates to not run away from their records unless they can do it as convincingly as Cory Gardner in Colorado.

I’ll get to the quite interesting Gret Stet results in another post. I need to clear my head and temporarily kick my politics addiction. I don’t want to  become a lefty nihilist like my friend Jeffrey whose semi-tongue in cheek suggestion is to burn the Democratic party down. It may be tempting but posting this Los Lobos tune is as close as I’ll get to that flame: