A few quick lines as I have a very busy day at work today.
Brad Polumbo in the NYPost argues that Gen Z (or as some call it in Hebrew, dor sug zayin[*] ;)) was bought off by the Biden regime’s student loan forgiveness (which he may never be able to implement), thus staving off the red wave.
Derek Hunter at Townhall (with Insty nodding in agreement) places the blame on one man — surprise, neither Mitch McConnell nor Donald Trump, but Lindsey Graham, whose proposal of a 15-week federal limit on abortion revived that D banner issue. Personally, I regarded that proposal as a sensible compromise and have said so (unlike Insty, who holds the position that this should always have been a matter for the states and not the federal government, as affirmed by the SCOTUS Dobbs ruling). But just as people were getting more preoccupied about inflation and urban lawlessness than about the “liberal” sacrament of St. Abortion, Graham allowed the antiDemocratic Party to sound the tocsin about it again.
(b) Meanwhile, in the Second Cold War, Europe seems to be sucking up to China. Make no mistake: China is an equal opportunity turtle-boy cultivator, all over the planet (including here in Israel).
[*] the idiomatic translation is “grade Z generation”, though it’s also a pun on the Hebrew word for penis, zayin, or the verb le-zayen, to f***. I’ve also heard dor mezuyan for “f***ed-up generation”.
Spin, strangeness, and charm 
Dobbs was decided on the basis that the federal government had no authority over abortion. Which means that either A) Dobbs was wrongly decided, or B) Graham was sponsoring an unconstitutional law. If you’re in the anti-abortion camp, Dobbs put abortion in a better place than it has been in a half century, and Graham was repudiating it almost before the ink on the decision had dried, by way of a bill that was dead on arrival with Democrat control of both chambers and the White House.
So it’s really, really hard to take Graham at his word on what he was trying to accomplish.
Well, not *quite* right: It was decided that there was no pre-existing right to abortion, and hence no grounds for SCOTUS to overrule state laws. It’s not clear that the ruling went quite so far as to say that Federal *legislation* was impermissible.
But totally agreed that it was a stupid self-own that likely cost us a lot of votes.
The blame game will lash out in all directions.
One more rock solid point from which to start is:
Large numbers of Americans see the US going in the wrong direction.
The economy is awful. Inflation high. Gas prices rising.
Crime and homelessness spreading to once-safe neighborhoods.
Yet Repubs lost their way.
Was it a “Red Undercurrent” that will firm and grow?
Are Americans unable to see what is in front of their eyes?
Are elections being gamed?