It was another rather momentous week in politics, as the Republicans chalked up enough midterm wins to retake control of the House of Representatives but fell short in the Senate, where Democrats picked up one seat (which is enough to assure them control) with one race still waiting for a runoff election in early December. The GOP will have a razor-thin House majority, which is quite likely to produce nothing but chaos for the next two years. After the results were known, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she (and her whole team) would step away from leadership roles and allow a generational shift to happen in the Democratic House caucus. And Donald Trump formally announced his third bid for the presidency, which didn't exactly go over as well as he might have hoped. Plus there will be the first White House wedding in years, and Joe Biden will become the first octogenarian to occupy the Oval Office when he turns 80 years old on Sunday. All in all, a big week.

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Nancy Pelosi will always be considered a historic speaker of the House of Representatives for many reasons -- the most facile of which to see is that she was the first woman to be speaker in all of American history. She was closer to the presidency than any woman had gotten before (this was true up until Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president). Historic things happened during her leadership, and she was always at the center of them. She acquired political power and wielded it well, which is really no surprise since she literally learned politics "at her daddy's knee," as a little girl. She has done Baltimore proud, to put that another way, as well as the D'Alesandro family (a Maryland political dynasty).

But Pelosi's breaking of the glass ceiling is really not the most important reason why she will be remembered as a historic speaker. Because she was so effective. She was the strongest leader of the House since probably Tip O'Neill -- and that is really saying something. She wielded power with great skill and she managed to accomplish a feat that many (including myself) had believed almost impossible: she successfully herded the Democratic cats in the House. She got them all moving in one direction, she held them together through thick and thin, and even when she was merely the minority leader she still showed she had better control over her caucus than whatever Republican was in charge of the House.

That is a phenomenal achievement. And it is almost certainly going to be the one she will be most remembered for. She got things done. She held her caucus together. She didn't give up when she lost the majority the first time (as most speakers do), she instead put in the years as minority leader and led her Democrats back into power. She served under four presidents. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they eventually name a House office building after her, as she has earned such an accolade with her record.

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Today, the United States Senate voted 62-37 to codify marriage equality into federal law, and to overturn the Defense Of Marriage Act from the 1990s which did the opposite. DOMA has already been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but as we've all seen, rights guaranteed by one Supreme Court can be chucked out the window by subsequent Supreme Courts. So today's vote on the Respect For Marriage Act was important, and not merely symbolic.

Gay marriage used to be a big wedge issue for the right. That's where DOMA came from in the first place, after all. It was a convenient political wedge to use against Democrats -- who were very timid about supporting gay marriage for a very long time. Please recall that Barack Obama didn't support gay marriage when he got elected in 2008 -- which wasn't all that long ago.

But support among the public has gone through an astonishing change in a relatively short period of time too. When DOMA was passed, almost 70 percent of the public did not approve of gay marriage. Now 71 percent do. The crossover -- where more people supported it than not -- happened during Obama's term. That is a jaw-dropping turnaround in public attitude. Even the Mormon church voiced support for the bill that passed today -- which is pretty astonishing as well, considering how fervently they fought against the idea for so long.

What used to be a solid Republican position on the issue ("I believe marriage should be between one man and one woman") is now increasingly untenable. Over half (55 percent) of all Republican voters now support marriage equality. And that number is just going to grow, because of the generational aspect of it. While only 30 percent of Republicans 65 years old or older support gay marriage, an astonishing 64 percent of 18-to-29 year old Republicans do. The old attitudes are dying off, quite literally.

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Unfortunately, that phrase doesn't have the alliteration of "Democrats in disarray," but it was tough to figure out what "R" word could work (other than "Republicans Are Revolting," which always just kind of seems self-evident to me, but I digress...), so I just went with the non-alliterative substitution. "Democrats In Disarray," of course, has become a running joke, because that is the mainstream political media's go-to headline whenever they're feeling especially lazy. It's also a joke precisely because of where we find ourselves right now -- when the Republicans are engaging in internecine warfare, the media often shrugs and doesn't pay any of it nearly the attention they do to Democratic intraparty tiffs.

But it's gotten hard to avoid, so headlines like mine are indeed showing up here and there. While the Republicans are now on the brink of wresting control from Nancy Pelosi in the House, it is far from the triumphant and sweeping victory they had all been expecting and promising. It is a massive disappointment, because their majority will be just as tight as it has been for Pelosi for the past two years. And Kevin McCarthy is nowhere near the leader Pelosi is, when it comes to herding cats. Before Pelosi's reign, Democrats were only loosely affiliated and groups of them would cross the aisle on a regular basis, in a perpetual chase of the elusive "bipartisanship" they all cherished (back then). Under Pelosi, House Democrats have been remarkable in how they stand together, both in the majority and in the minority. With the current crop of Republicans McCarthy faces an almost-impossible task, and he is simply not up to it in any way.

Consider that the radicals in the Republican House ranks have caused the last two speakers to quit in disgust. Both John Boehner and Paul Ryan tried to get the Tea Partiers to see reason, but in the end they failed to do so. Now the radical faction is stronger and much more outspoken -- and much more inclined to resist any attempts at compromise. This is going to leave McCarthy in the same position Ryan and Boehner were in, because the only way he'll get anything done is to get a handful of reasonable Republicans to vote with the Democrats to pass the necessary bills to keep the government running. Which will, of course, enrage the radicals.

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Donald Trump is, in a word, performative. His entire political career has been one long installation of performance art. He lives to see good television ratings. It is his own personal measure of his self-worth. And tomorrow night, he'll be unveiling his next act.

It's far from being a secret what this act will consist of. Tomorrow night, Donald Trump will announce his third bid for the United States presidency. He has wanted to make this announcement for months now, but has so far been talked into delaying it by his advisors. Tomorrow, the delay will be over and Trump will throw his hat back into the ring.

The effect of Trump's announcement will be multifaceted. But what it all really boils down to is this: everyone will be talking about it. Here I am talking about it, and it's not even going to happen for another whole day. Trump will once again occupy the center ring under the American political big top.

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Well, that was a better week than we expected, we have to say.

The 2022 midterm elections are now over (although the counting still isn't) and the one big takeaway is that either Republicans dropped the ball or Democrats ran excellent campaigns all over the country. Or maybe some combination of the two. The red wave simply did not appear as predicted. A "blue breakwater" turned it back.

This is downright historic. As of this writing, the outcome is still in doubt -- control of both chambers of Congress is still up in the air. But no matter how the remaining races turn out, Democrats managed an expectations-defying performance.

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Reasonable Republicans now have the best chance they have had in almost two years to reclaim their party and realign it so that it is not in perpetual orbit around the whims of one unhinged man -- a man whose track record of losing elections grew much larger this Tuesday. Donald Trump is now being called the thing he fears most -- a loser -- by members of his own party. The right-wing media is even jumping on the "Dump Trump" bandwagon. The next few weeks could be pivotal for the ultimate direction of the Republican Party, in fact. It could either recede into the swamp of fawning obsequiousness towards Trump (that it has been stuck in since 2016), or it could decide that a brand new direction is what is needed right now.

A lot might depend on whether Trump actually follows through with his wink-and-nudge promise that he's going to declare his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race next Tuesday. Reportedly, he even had to be talked out of jumping in the race the day before the midterms, since to Trump, everything is always (or should always be) about Trump. To nobody's surprise, he even laid out the formulation he wanted the party to follow, no matter what happened in the midterms: "Well, I think if they win I should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all."

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That headline could be applicable to today's post-election situation in a number of ways, I suppose. As a movie director's cry (i.e. "We're starting take number two!"), since we are going to have a Senate race runoff election on December 6th in Georgia. It could be read literally, since at this point both parties need to take two of the three uncalled races in order to achieve a Senate majority. Or just as: "Take two and call me in the morning," the classic punchline to a doctor joke -- because it will probably take quite a while to get all the results in even before the December runoff. Or maybe even as: "I did a double-take when I heard the first results," that could work too. The funniest thing I heard during the extended post-election period in 2020 came out of the mouth of a babe -- some parent's toddler (this was passed along to me as an anecdote) said they were tired of watching television with Mommy and Daddy because "all they wanted to watch was The Map Show." And it looks like we'll all have at least a few more mornings of checking in with The Map Show before we know what Congress is really going to look like in January.

The Senate

Technically, four Senate races haven't been called yet, but in Alaska the only thing in doubt is which Republican is going to win. It has adopted a "top-four" ranked-choice slate from their new "jungle primary" system, which left one MAGAfied Trump-endorsed Republican (Kelly Tshibaka) at (all numbers are "as of this writing," of course) 44.4 percent, while incumbent Lisa Murkowski is pulling in 42.7 percent. The Democrat in the race is below 10 percent, but neither of the Republicans has hit the magic 50-percent-plus-one mark, so it will go into the at least the second round of the ranked-choice votes. Murkowski's still got an excellent chance of winning, but either way it'll leave the seat in the Republicans' column.

This means that the Senate split now stands -- with all the races called last night or today plus Alaska -- at Republicans 49, Democrats 48. Three states remain outstanding: Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia. Both parties need two of these three to assure control of the chamber.

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At this point, there's only one thing left to say:

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

The American system of holding elections is about to go through a stress test. I saw this term in the headline of a Washington Post piece today and had to agree it was the correct term to use. A stress test, whether for a piece of software or a new gizmo, is essentially the quality assurance/quality control people beating the living daylights out of it until it crumbles. For online software, this might mean simulating millions of people trying to access it simultaneously (see: Obamacare marketplace website rollout). For a new doodad, it might mean dropping it from increasing heights until it shatters when it hits. The whole idea is to push beyond the limits to find out the breaking point, one way or another.

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