Winning the odd-year elections is far short of winning midterms or presidential years, but chalk one up for the Democrats: They couldn't have done much better on Tuesday.
They added a governor in New Jersey and protected an open seat in Virginia.
They gained far more seats in the lower chamber of the Virginia legislature than anyone expected, giving them either a tie in that body or a slim majority.
They appear to have won an open state Senate seat in Washington, giving them a majority in that chamber.
They picked up three more legislative seats in New Jersey to add to their large majorities there, and added three state legislative seats in Georgia special elections and one in a New Hampshire special. Democrats swept several mayoral races, won the biggest ballot measure of the night and expanded Medicaid in Maine.
And while I don't have comprehensive results on down-ballot races, there do seem to have been Democratic gains all over the place in local government.
Republicans did hold the only U.S. House seat contested on Tuesday, which was in Utah. But other than that, it was a wipeout.
That said, it's very easy to read too much into these results. Virginia is now a fairly solid Democratic state, and New Jersey is an extremely Democratic state. So winning those two is something Democrats are supposed to do. And as for the rest: Remember that Republicans had reached a historic high-water mark almost everywhere, so it's no surprise that Democrats will find some easy seats to win back, some of which won't look as easy as they are based on previous returns from years in which Republicans overperformed.
It's also the case that the in-party usually does poorly in mid-terms and off-year elections, even when the president is fairly popular.