U.S. midterms: Why a ‘rousing’ Democrat performance could offer Canada stability

Donald Trump's hoped-for 'red wave' failed to materialize in the U.S. midterms, although as of Wednesday it was too soon to tell which party would have control over the Senate.

David Smentek watched his laptop screen through a thick pair of glasses Tuesday night, running through county after county of bright blue dots, dark red dots, and dots of various shades in between.

Sitting at a corner table at Jake’s Tavern on 7th Street in Washington, D.C., as the midterm results rolled in, Smentek — who worked for various Republican causes between 2008 and 2019, including a six-year stint as a legislative director on Capitol Hill — detailed which results were unsurprising, which races would tighten as the Republican vote came in, and which ones were straight-up shockers.

His overall assessment, however, was less granular.

Any Republican who said this was a good night “is blowing smoke up your ass,” Smentek said frankly.

He would later reformulate his assessment to it “hard to say this is anything other than a rousing Democratic victory.”

A cold wind had blown through the capital on Tuesday, ending days of unseasonable warmth, and it seemed like you could do worse for a metaphor about the Democrats’ chances heading into the 2022 midterm vote.

Losing control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, still operating under the shadow of former president Donald Trump, was treated by partisans on both sides as a foregone conclusion. The real prize of this election was control of the Senate and, with it, significant power over how the next two years of President Joe Biden’s administration would play out.

Control of the Senate was still up in the air as the sun came up Wednesday morning, with key races in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada too close to call. But the “red wave” called for by Trump failed to materialize — good news for Democrats, and something Republicans will be left to ponder as results continue to trickle in.