EXTRA: … and on a final note!

Illinois had the “blue wave” that some were predicting for the nation, although that isn’t as much of an achievement as it might sound. We already had a Democrat-leaning government. Now, it’s Democrat-dominated.

DONNELLY: He gone! from Indiana scene

But in other places across the country, it seems the status quo prevailed. Republicans in many states managed to hold on to what they had, and even gained a few spots.

THE U.S. SENATE seat from Indiana, for instance. Joe Donnelly will go down as a one-term fluke. Beating an anti-abortion extremist in 2012, he lost fairly early in the evening to Mike Braun. Although not quite as early as Bruce Rauner’s Illinois gubernatorial defeat, making his concessions call by 7:40 p.m. Which I'm sure Republican political operatives think is balanced out by Donnelly's defeat.

In Florida, where both governor and senator posts were up for grabs, Republicans were able to prevail with victories. In Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz managed to prevail with a narrow victory over Democrat Beto O'Rourke. The general overtone is that Congress will continue to be a Republican-leaning body, with not enough seats flipping for Donald Trump to face threats of power loss.

Which means I’m sure Trump will be declaring victory in the near future. Maybe he’ll even be denouncing Illinois, and Chicago in particular, as a place that can’t just get with the program of this Age of Trump we now live in.

Not a popular sentiment in some parts of U.S. Photo by Gregory Tejeda

All I know is that my gut feeling Tuesday night is similar to the one I felt on Election Night 2016 – elation that I lived in Illinois, a place that has become even more of an island of sense in a nation of ideological nonsense.

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