I guess we'll stay in the U.S.A. (and not move to Portugal)

Well, now — who knew? Last week, who knew there wasn’t really going to be a “red tide” or a “red wave” or a “red tsunami” as the all-knowing pollsters were predicting?

Why do we even listen to those poll-takers? They got it dead wrong with Hillary Clinton vs. you know who. And they were flat-out wrong this time with the mid-term elections.

The sensible voters ignored the doomers and waited in long lines to restore a sense of sanity to this country.

Elaine Edelman of East Brunswick, N.J. had a letter in today’s New York Times that explained what just happened. She asked: “Did Republicans and the pundits really believe that spending eight percent more on groceries outweighs the G.O.P. telling us what we can and cannot do with our bodies?”

Alongside Edelman was a letter from Len Disesa of Dresher, Pa. He wrote, “Before Election Day I had trouble sleeping because I was so worried that our American experiment was in its death throes…But people chose democracy over their concern that gas prices were high. I will sleep like a baby tonight.”

The doomers had included Maureen Dowd of the Times, who last Sunday asked: “Are we ready for our new Republican overlords?” She ended that column: “Heaven help us.”

Another Times columnist, David Brooks, had sagely opined that the Democrats lacked “a narrative” compared with the Republicans and so were about to lose the Senate and the House. (Guess what, the Dems are now favored to maintain majority control of the Senate and the Republicans will probably end up with only a narrow minority in the House.) In today’s Times, Brooks didn’t admit he got it all wrong but wrote that this election marked “the triumph of the normies,” those leaders who get things done instead of screaming crazy stuff.

Last week, which now seems like a long time ago, Garrison Keillor wrote in his column that after “the liberal elite gets dehorsed,” he would aim to soothe himself with long walks. “I believe I will head for rural Minnesota and buy an old farmhouse surrounded by woods and move in with all my books and LPs and a stereo, leaving my laptop behind, and live as I did 50 years ago, reading Chekhov and Emerson and I.B. Singer and listening to Mozart and Faure and old Broadway musicals.”

Meanwhile, Colin McEnroe devoted his Connecticut NPR show to the trend of Americans moving to other countries because they are so depressed by what’s happening here. He interviewed a caller who has settled into a happy, mellow life in Portugal, where health care and everything else is inexpensive and people aren’t shouting at each other. My wife and I listened to her and wondered if we should start thinking about heading to Canada or Europe.

On election night we followed our usual routine of watching CNN’s John King at his “magic wall,” showing us the incoming votes state by state and even county by county. But after a couple of hours we started to get dazed and glazed and turned it off without knowing what was really happening. It wasn’t until the next morning, when we turned on NPR at 6 a.m. and heard the glorious news — John Fetterman beat “Dr. Oz” for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania! — that we began to realize, at the new dawn, that something good was playing out.

Here in Connecticut, the hapless Leora Levy was trounced by incumbent U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. The Associated Press declared him the winner at 8:05 p.m. — five minutes after the polls closed. But she kept everybody waiting until 10:45 p.m. to finally admit she had gotten walloped, despite a ringing endorsement from you know who. It seems her nonsensical ranting blaming Blumenthal and President Biden for allowing “illegals” to “bring fentanyl over the border” didn’t register with the rational voters in the nutmeg state. Nor did Bob Stefanowski’s fear-mongering allow him to come close to beating incumbent Gov. Ned Lamont.

“This one’s hard to figure,” Stefanowski told the New Haven Register after he lost. “Maybe the people are happier than I thought.”

The most entertaining part of this whole week has been watching the Trumpster lashing out at all his cronies in the wake of his failed candidates.

“We had tremendous success,” he claimed. But back home in Mar-a-Lago he was angrily blaming Sean Hannity of Fox News and even his wife Melania for telling him he should endorse “Dr. Oz.”

Stay tuned! Things are going to get even more entertaining in Trump World.