The US Senate victories have a lot to teach us. The Tea Party won Republican primaries and nominated candidates that the general election electorate could not stomach. The same thing happened in Clackamas County, but on the left, when Charlotte Lehan defeated Dave Hunt.

I am still frustrated that a candidate steeled by partisan combat in the legislature and ready to pick the big fights on behalf of progressives, and the only Democrat capable of winning in a general election in Clackamas County, had his candidacy ended by the strange combined efforts of progressives like Carla Axtman and Jonathan Poisner, and right-wing wackos like Rob Kremer and Kevin Mannix. Clackamas County is now an issue--a huge issue for Progressives.

I don't know what all the next steps look like in taking back Clackamas County, but I think an important first question needs to be one of electability. That question was obviously not asked by Charlotte's supporters.

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Great report, thanks!

Martha Schrader won the open seat vacated by Ann Linninger. Smith leads incumbent Jamie Damon, pending the ballot tampering investigation.

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I was quite heartened to wake up Wed. morning and read about the many wonderful results in Oregon! Obviously, you guys all worked your butts off and it showed.

Unfortunately, the state I now live in - North Carolina, bucked the national trend & went further to the right. Opposite of the direction we were headed in 2008. We passed a constitutional amendment that prohibits any form of recognition of gay marriage. We now have a tea-party, HIGHLY conservative State House and Senate. We elected a R Governor that while moderate, is quite like Mitt Romney in that he will pander to whoever he has to, and the Rep. legislature will have him by the kahunas. Our state and local Dem. parties have been riddled with in-fighting and scandal.

But take heart....there are several of us who are already working on a 2 year, 4 year, 6 year, and 8 year plan. We CAN take NC back. We WILL take NC back and it WILL BE BLUE AGAIN!

Forgive me though, for I will be quite homesick for my home state of Oregon as we prepare to wage war here in backwards land.

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The question of mandate is one best not broached (a few writers have pointed out why the concept itself is pretty flawed), but this was not the "status quo election" many conservatives are trying to spin it as.

Obama held the presidency, and both the Senate and the house turned bluer. It's true Boehner hangs onto the speakership, but the House was no unmitigated victory for the GOP--quite the opposite. After the last, midterm election, GOP legislatures got to gerrymander districts, making it harder to lose congressional seats. Yet they still managed to do so.

What should be far more worrying is that on the state and national level, the GOP field very poor candidates who have been failing with surprising regularity. The national popular vote has gone Dem 5 of the last six elections. In head-to-head matchups in red states, radicals like Mourdock and Akin have failed to win over enough of their own voters to carry statewide elections.

Beginning in 2004, I noted that Oregon seemed to be ahead of the curve on the direction of politics, and that still looks like the case. In Oregon, Republicans can win small, red districts, but haven't won statewide election in a dog's age. More and more, the same pattern is developing for the GOP in other states and the nation.

Perhaps contempt for half the country is a bad electoral strategy.

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I think it's important to note a few other triumphs reported by the Human Rights Campaign: We just changed the course of history. Before Tuesday, we had lost in every single state that voted on marriage equality. Every single one.

Now the votes from Washington are in, and we've won FOUR OUT OF FOUR. A clean sweep.

This is a huge deal. Not only did we just eliminate the anti-LGBT talking point that the public is against marriage equality, we re-elected President Obama, sent dozens of our heroes to Congress, put Tammy Baldwin in the Senate, defended a judge in Iowa from a political hatchet job, and reinvigorated [the LGBT] movement. Plus Oregon Democrat Rep. Tina Kotek is on track to be first openly lesbian Speaker in the country. The victories were almost too many to count.

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It feels very much to me that this election was about common values, not the economy or foreign policy. Obama and Romney showed little distinction where it concerns bombing the hell out other countries, so the nation was left to decide who to vote for based on domestic issues. Obama prevented a recession from becoming a depression (unless you're a minority, then the economy is basically a constant depression), yet Romney seemed to take glee in the idea of crushing peoples' lives by shipping their jobs overseas. After that, the real differences emerge, and that's really where people were pulled to strongly support one or the other. The people crying over Romney's defeat know this was their last chance at holding back the 21st century, and their panic is far less about Obama than it is about living in a world where hatred of homosexuals, xenophobia of Latino migrants, and treating womens' bodies as property will no longer be tolerated.

Obviously every seat counts and they would rather have 35 than 34 but some Democrats I know are just about chortling over the Republicans' having to deal with Parrish especially now that they have placated her by making her second in command in the House. Loose cannon is not quite the right term -- more like runaway missile launcher.

One of the big losers in Oregon Tuesday was not on the ballot: the Oregonian. Brought in to toe publisher Chris Anderson's rightwing line, editorial page editor Erik Lukens engineered the endorsement of his Bend buddy Knute Buehler for Secretary of State, carefully endorsed enough suburban Republican House candidates to attempt to thwart Democratic control, urged defeat of Measure 85 and tried to undermine the Multnomah Library District -- and lost, lost, lost, lost down the line.

Now heading into next year without te latest ship-jumpers — star political cartoonist Jack Ohman and statehouse bureau mainstay Michelle Cole, the O is a shadow of a shadow of its once-proud former self. I suspect that when the Newhouse overlords at ironically named Advance Publications finally reduce publication to several days a week hardly anyone will notice. Sad, sad, sad.

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If the GOP's "rape candidates" had kept their mouths shut, do you think they would have lost? It's not that I think their sentiments are unique to some in the GOP, but most aren't foolish enough to say something like that. Winning on the basis of someone's huge mistake is nice, but I'm not sure it should give great comfort about the next time around.