One regular refrain of the last month of the 2022 midterm was that abortion and Dobbs had faded as a driving issue in the face of economic concerns. Another was that “democracy” was, for most voters, an abstraction without much relevance to more immediate concerns like inflation. That first bit of conventional wisdom always seemed overstated at best. But the election results point to something different that many observers missed in the narrow and perhaps over-literal way these issues were siloed in polls and election commentary: abortion, election denialism and other elements of GOP whackery melded together into a broader fear of Republican extremism that was larger than the sum of its parts.

The Fetterman campaign in Pennsylvania was the most closely watched and highest stakes race of the cycle. At 2 p.m. eastern today Kate Riga and I are going to do a live briefing with Fetterman campaign manager Brendan McPhillips. We’re going to learn how the race unfolded from the inside. If you’re a member, please join us live at 2 p.m. We sent out an email Thursday with instructions on how to register. We’ll be taking your questions during the briefing. If you’d like to get your question in in advance please send us an email at talk (at) talkingpointsmemo dot com with the subject line “Fetterman Briefing.”

See you at 2 p.m.

Newly counted ballots have given Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto an insurmountable lead in her Nevada Senate election. All the networks have now called it. That means that Democrats have retained control of the Senate.

As of this morning it’s more than a theoretical possibility that Democrats will remain in charge of the House next year. Dave Wasserman of The Cook Report this morning put it this way: When you put aside the races already called and the ones in which each party has a clear lead, you’re left with six seats he considers genuine tossups — #AZ01, #AZ06, #CA13, #CA22, #CA41, #WA03. If Democrats get all six, if they run the table, they stay in the margin 218-217.

That sounds unlikely and it is unlikely. But you also have to see it through the prism of the fact that Democratic candidates have been running tables, improbably coming from behind or coming out on top, since mid-Tuesday evening. So it could happen.

Let me add one sort of odd note here. There’s actually a pretty good argument that it’s in Democrats’ political interests not to get the majority here.

Let me follow up on yesterday’s post about this quasi-revolt against Mitch McConnell. I’ve tried to look more at the whole picture. Or perhaps I was still too sleep deprived yesterday afternoon. But all of these leadership questions and battles we’re seeing now are just proxy battles over Trump. One part of the GOP blames Trump for their disappointing showing and sees this as their best opportunity in years to push him aside, in most cases lining up behind Ron DeSantis, at least for now, as the vehicle to do that. These mini-revolts against McConnell are really just attempts to open up new fronts against McConnell to defend and protect Trump.

Entirely predictably the knives are already out in the House for probable Speaker Kevin McCarthy. On cue they all come from the hard right of the caucus who believe the problem in 2022 is that Republicans weren’t sufficiently feral. More interesting is a push on the Senate side to delay the Republican leadership elections in the upper chamber. The wannabe mutineers don’t seem quite willing to say what they’re doing. They’re not coming out against McConnell, proposing an alternative leader or criticizing his management. But since McConnell’s leadership is almost universally assumed there’s only one logic and aim of delay.

ITEM One: I continue to be calmly stunned that the battle for control of the House still does not seem settled. Any Republican margin is likely to be so minuscule that it amounts to something of a poisoned chalice for Kevin McCarthy and the GOP generally. As I’ve noted repeatedly, the debt ceiling remains the sui generis, overriding thing. But if you set that aside, given that Democrats will not get 52 senate seats, in purely political terms there’s actually some real advantage in having Republicans hold the House by only one or two seats.

We need to remember that Donald Trump is a pathological liar. That said, I think this requires some explanation, if only a clear and definitive confirmation that this did not happen.

John Fetterman’s Pennsylvania Senate run turned out to be one of the most high-stakes, closely watched and — for many — most emotionally engaging of the cycle. Now we are going to learn how it unfolded from the inside. On Monday at 2 p.m. ET will be joined for a TPM Newsmaker briefing by Fetterman campaign manager Brendan McPhillips. We’ll talk about the early salad days when it seemed like Fetterman might win in a landslide, the tightening polls, press criticism over Fetterman’s absence from the campaign trail, the debate and what the campaign did to secure victory in the final days when many election analysts were predicting a Mehmet Oz win in a Republican wave.

TPM’s Kate Riga and I will lead the discussion and take your questions. The briefing is open to all TPM members. If you’re a member you should be receiving an email shortly with instructions on how to register and join us on Monday.

Democratic strategists Simon Rosenberg and Tom Bonier were the two most prominent voices telling us for weeks that the 2022 Red Wave was a mirage. They were right. We talked to them yesterday about what they saw. If you weren’t able to join us live you can see the discussion after the jump.