This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Reports from almost all media indicated that Democrats were breathing sighs of relief all night long on election day, Tuesday, as it became apparent that the Republican “red wave” predicted by some pundits and polls had failed to materialize.

Several days later, the Ds are still breathing.

Drawn from various publications here are what reporters often call “takeaways:”

• The GOP hit its high-water mark early in the night when projections from Florida showed both Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio winning their races easily.
• It was mostly downhill for the GOP from there.  The most dramatic result — so far— came when Democrat John Fetterman’s defeated Republican Mehmet Oz in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races in Pennsylvania.  To win, Fetterman, to his credit, overcame notions that he had lost so much from a recent stroke that he was not qualified to serve.
• Why did the GOP fare worse than expected?  The Washington Post says “it was that GOP leaders spent much of the last year fighting against each other or plotting against their own primary voters.  They were hobbled by unprepared first-time candidates, fundraising shortfalls, and Donald Trump, whose self-concern required constant attention — right up to the eve of the election, when he forced party bosses to beg him once again to delay a presidential campaign announcement.”
• Republicans will control the U.S. House, but by a smaller margin than originally expected.
• In the Senate, control likely will come down to run-off between Senator Raphael Warnock and former football star, Herschel Walker, who showed himself to be a terrible candidate during the campaign. 
• At the gubernatorial level, races that had caused Democrats some last-minute nervousness were won comfortably by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.  Plus, in Oregon, the Democrat, Tina Kotek, won the statehouse to preserve the office the Ds have held since 1987.  Further, Whitmer likely cemented a perception that she might be a good candidate for president in 2024 – if President Joe Biden does not run, or, perhaps, even if he does.
• Speaking of Biden, this was as good a mid-term outcome as he could have dared to expect.  Whatever the final results, he fared far better in his first mid-term than the two most recent Democrat presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, did in theirs.  That’s vindication, of a kind, for what has been called “Biden’s much-criticized but steady, low-wattage approach.”
• Republicans in the U.S. House – and the likely speaker, Kevin McCarthy — now face hard questions about how to manage with a smaller margin than expected.  That started yesterday when a group of far right conservative House Republicans demanded that McCarthy take more time to take up the mantle of leadership because they wanted more of a say.  Still, no doubt, the Rs would rather have won by a small margin than the alternative.
• Huge wins by DeSantis and Rubio turned Florida red from its past as a swing state.  By winning, DeSantis positions himself as a – if not “the” – leading R candidate for president in 2024.
• Of course, that irritates Donald Trump no end because he thinks he always is the leader, no matter the truth.
• According to Niall Stange who writes for hill.com, “the verdict on the vexing issues of election denialism, threats to democracy and flat-out conspiracy theories was, ultimately, ambiguous.  Several people who hew to those kinds of views lost, including Republican Doug Mastriano who was heavily defeated by Democrat Josh Shapiro in the race to be Pennsylvania’s governor, and Don Bolduc, who failed to run Senator Maggie Hassan anywhere near as close as some Republicans had hoped.”

For my part, the last bullet strikes home.  Election denialism or rabid anti-democracy was not as strong as I feared it would be.

That’s no guarantee for the future because Trump and his minions will continue to stoke the fires of antagonism and violence.  Eugene Robinson in today’s Washington Post says Trump will not go away quietly after a stinging defeat – he’ll have to be thrown out.

So, back to the start of this blog, regarding the WHY of this election?  Not sure yet, other than what appears above, so there is another chapter yet to be written about this election, the WHY, not just the who. 

Finally, this from George Will, the savvy analyst who writes for the Washington Post:

“Tuesday’s elections should move both parties to introspection.  Journalists could benefit from emulation.  Many of them believe that the nation does not just have problems but has ‘existential’ crises:  Democracy is a guttering candle, dying before climate change snuffs out the remainder of life.  Progressives, because of their mind meld with journalists, talk to voters a tad too much about existential this and that, and too little about voters’ existence.”

Will makes a great point.