In case you missed all the fun, we’ve got last night’s results posted here.

Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) says his recently diagnosed Parkinson’s disease is the “sly, underhanded” target of a National Republican Congressional Committee email that repeatedly refers to his alleged forgetfulness and throws in a reference to clumsiness for good measure.

Howard Dean hails a “big sweep” for progressives.

Rendell calls Sestak’s chances against Toomey “at best a tossup.”

It is quite an understatement to say that I am not Rand Paul’s target audience. Still, I couldn’t help notice something about his brief acceptance speech and I’m curious to hear whether any of you had a similar take. I don’t think I’d ever seen Paul speak at any length. Or if I did I don’t have a clear recollection of it. And he came off to me as arrogant, bellicose and even a little messianic in his demeanor. To put it baldly, he sounded like a jerk.

When I watched it on replay later it didn’t sound quite as jarring to me. But maybe that’s because my impression from the first viewing was so negative that a second look couldn’t live up to my first impression. (see some video highlights here.)

In any case, that’s actually quite different from his father. I find Ron Paul’s politics awful and he’s a classic ideologue. But as a person he comes off as pretty humble and even unassuming, which I’ve always thought is the reason he manages to have a certain degree of crossover popularity despite his draconian and often ugly politics.

Now does any of that matter? Not necessarily, I guess. And when I mentioned this in the newsroom this evening a couple members of our team pointed out, rightly, that that sort of attitude is part and parcel of the Tea Party movement and really any anti-establishment movement for that matter. But even in a conservative state like Kentucky some measure of pivoting is necessary in a general election. And I wondered after seeing Paul whether he’s constitutionally capable of it.

It’s looks pretty clear now that Blanche Lincoln will win a plurality in Arkansas tonight. But she’s got a hell of a race cut out for her going forward to June 8th. And here’s the thing to watch: Senate Dems took the preliminary steps this evening to strip her very aggressive derivatives amendment out the financial reform bill.

I think that’s going to be very easy for Halter to use as a political cudgel against her over the next three weeks. He’ll argue that it was all a ploy on her part and that as soon as the polls closed her allies in the Senate got ready to strip it out. Whether that’s completely fair or not, who knows? But that could be a punishing issue against Lincoln. I suspect we’ll hear more about this tomorrow.

It’s looking like Bill Halter might actually end up ahead of Blanche Lincoln tonight, though it’s of course a run-off either way. But Lincoln is speaking right now. And I must say, she’s got the sound of a loser in this speech. She seems kind of shell-shocked. She started off saying that she’d been written off and now is back. But I mean, that’s not true. The consensus was that she’d win tonight with a good margin and quite possibly win outright and avoid a run-off. Now she’s got a real fight on her hands.

If you’re watching this speech, I’d be curious to hear your take.

Late Update: Votes are coming in now in Pulaski County and it’s looking more likely that Lincoln will squeak out a plurity. But it’s still extremely close.

Very few people went into tonight thinking Bill Halter would win. The big question was whether or not Lincoln could get over 50%.

Well, it looks pretty clear that that’s not going to happen. And this is going to go to a run-off on June 8th. But look at the numbers right now. With a little under half the precincts reporting Lincoln’s only ahead by 2 points. That’s a pretty thin margin, certainly a lot closer than I expected or the polls suggested.

Now the wild card here is the also-ran candidate Morrison. He was running very much on the right. Since Halter’s running to Lincoln’s left, simple math might suggest that Morrison’s votes break to Lincoln. But I don’t think it’s that clear. Morrison is running so strongly against the national Democratic party that I really don’t think you can say with any real confidence which way Morrison’s voters break or frankly if they’ll even show up for a Halter-Lincoln contest at all.

This looks like it’s going to be a real race. And I have to imagine the netroots, the unions and the progressive wing of the Democratic party are going to recommit to this race in a big way.

Tomorrow and for a while now, Republicans and especially Democrats are going to be taking a very close look at what happened in the special election to replace the late Rep. Jack Murtha, where the Democrat Critz (a longtime aide to Murtha) beat the Republican Burns by a substantial though not overwhelming margin. We’ve had a lot of special elections over the last couple years but most have been in district’s heavily weighted toward one party or another. But this is a genuine swing district.

Though Murtha held it for like forever, it was the only district in the country that went for John Kerry in 2004 and John McCain in 2008. (Right? What’s that about?) So it’s a district that can go both ways.

Now there are a lot of caveats here. Critz ran away from the president on Health Care Reform and he was definitely not wedding himself to the national party. And since a Democrat had held it for more than a generation, you can’t say it’s a slamming victory for the Dems. But Dems are going to be happy right now with a lot less than slamming victories. But what it does show is that even a swing district, with a culturally conservative electorate, a Dem can win.

There are a lot people in Washington today who think any Dem who’s not in a really safe seat isn’t safe. And they may be right. But a lot of Dems are going to look at this and say, okay, this guy managed to do it. And Republicans will look at the same result and realize that even with the wave, the candidate still has to win it. It’s not automatic.

In the PA-12 special election for the late Jack Murtha’s House seat, Republican Tim Burns has reportedly conceded defeat to Democrat Mark Critz.

10:13 PM: They’re calling it. Sestak wins. So far it’s just AP, and they’ve had some whoppers in the past. But I suspect we’ll hear others momentarily.

10:21 PM: Specter speaking. Choking up.

10:42 PM: Specter tweets: “Congratulations, Congressman Sestak. You have my support for the general election.”