Obama and the G.O.P.’s Red Sea

Coming after the drubbing Democrats received in last year’s midterms, Tuesday was another bad Election Day for the Party. In Kentucky’s gubernatorial race, Matt Bevin, a Tea Party Republican who made rolling back the state’s participation in the Affordable Care Act a central part of his platform, defied the opinion polls to win handily, bringing the number of G.O.P. governors across the country to thirty-two. In Virginia, a well-funded Democratic bid to take control of the State Senate failed. In Mississippi, voters rejected an effort to change the state’s constitution to guarantee more funding for public schools. And in Houston, the fourth-largest city in the country, a ballot measure that would have banned discrimination on the basis of age, race, disability, sexual orientation, gender, and a number of other categories was defeated by a wide margin.