This short statement by Micah Cohen, from a recent episode of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast, caught my ear:

We wrapped up the live blog at 2:30AM and before we wrapped it up I was looking at [newspaper] headlines.

Almost all of them had some version of “Split Decision”… which is stupid, really.

People are confusing inputs and outputs. The input was not a split decision: where the American people are at at this moment is super clear. The output? Sure, it’s split. But that’s not the same thing.

Clearly, the inputs were strongly pro-Democrat. I still think “Split Decision” is a good description in the sense that Bill Kristol used it: it wasn’t a good night for Republicans, but neither was it an obvious repudiation of Trump and Trumpism. In that sense, I remain disappointed by the midterms. Sure, I didn’t really think that America would “rise up as one” against Trump… but I certainly hoped for it.