Summing Up — So Far

Let’s begin with the best news of election week. Republicans appear likely to retain control of the Senate. That means no court-packing (though the idea has now been given legitimacy in some Democratic circles), no Equality Act, expanding the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock. And no economically ruinous Green New Deal.

A Democratic president might well have one or more Supreme Court appointments in the next four years, but to secure confirmation, he or she will have to be in the Merrick Garland mold, not a woke legislator in judicial robes.

Just before the election, Hugh Hewitt said on Fox News that the best thing that could happen for a President-elect Joe Biden would be a Republican-held Senate. Having that foil would serve him well in fending off the progressive wing of his party, which will surely pressure him to go against his political instincts, honed over a lifetime in the Senate. Hewitt was right.

PERHAPS THE MOST salutary outcome for the long-range prospects of the United States was the demonstration to Democrats of the limited appeal of identity politics. After months of nonstop promotion of the notion that America is characterized by “systemic racism” that can only be ended by race-conscious equalizing of outcomes, even in uber-liberal California voters overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 16, and thereby maintained the ban on preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public education, public employment, and government contracts.