In the wake of his election on Tuesday night, Kentucky Governor-elect Andy Beshear gave one of the most fascinating victory speeches I've ever heard. Usually, these are happy, banal occasions. You thank everyone, starting with Your Lovely Spouse and working your way down to the assistant director of outreach to the scuba-diving community. You explain that this has not been your victory, but a victory for All of You Out There. You emphasize that you have been elected to serve all the people, not just the people who voted for you. You make sure the bar is sufficiently stocked. You wish your defeated opponent well. You smile and wave. You get the hell out of there so you can have a good night's sleep for the first time in two years. Fin.

Beshear checked off every item on that list. (Except, perhaps, for the part about the bar. Anyone who was there can confirm that one down in the comments bunker.) He wished defeated incumbent Matt Bevin and all the Bevins well. And then Beshear went on to clobber Bevin with everything that Tea Party vandal had done to make him the most unpopular American governor since Thomas Hutchinson.

My first week in office, I'm going to rescind this governor's Medicaid waiver. We're going to give this state a brand-new board of education and we're going to restore the voting rights of over 140,000 citizens. Every day, we're going to work to expand access to health care and we're going to fight to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Health care is a basic human right and my administration is going to treat it as such. Under my administration, a pension is a promise. There will be no more going after the pensions of our teachers, social workers, and first-responders. They've earned that retirement. And public education will be the central priority of my administration.

This, at the very least, was a bracing reminder that all the change only begins on election night. (Of course, Bevin is going to avail himself of every opportunity left to reverse what happened to him. Consider: Kentucky Republicans won every other statewide race, and by healthy margins. It wasn't "irregularities," dude. It was you.) The same is true of the stunning Democratic sweep in Virginia. Now, those new majorities have to deliver, despite the fact that the now-minority Republicans are going to be throwing fits from the first moment. That job has to begin immediately.

Tate Reeves, Human Participation Trophy. Rory Doyle Getty Images

There were a number of results that brought a welcome chuckle. The city council of Mike Pence's hometown in Indiana went to the Democrats for the first time in nearly four decades. Juli Briskman, who got fired when a photo of her flipping off the president*'s motorcade went viral, got elected to the district council for the area in which one of the president*'s golf courses is located. The Philadelphia suburbs went under a sea of blue. The White House was reduced to gloating that the Republicans managed to hold onto the governorship...in Mississippi. Tate Reeves, Human Participation Trophy.

So many of these elections were decided on local issues that it's hard to know what any of it means in relation to 2020. But there is no question that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is electoral hemlock in a lot of places on which the Republicans used to depend, especially in the north and east, but also now in places like Louisville, Charlotte, and Atlanta. And the party itself seems utterly incapable of a course correction any time soon. Edge of Cliff, next exit.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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