But the election deprived the GOP of the massive red wave that it had predicted. A wafer-thin House Republican advantage would be volatile as extreme lawmakers would wield disproportionate power in the conference. A few defections by moderates could, meanwhile, end the party’s capacity to pass bills.

Divided government would also mean two years of dysfunction, bitterness, fiscal cliffs and debt showdowns between a Republican House and the Democratic White House. Token talk of bipartisan cooperation won’t last long. Even if Democrats somehow manage to cling to the House as final results trickle in, they’d also lack the leeway to pass nation-changing laws. And whoever wins the Senate majority, the chamber will effectively be split down the middle and locked in an angry stalemate. Like America itself.

The election results pose new questions heading into the next White House campaign over the prospects of both Trump and Biden. Trump’s obsession with promoting chaos candidates in his image may yet again doom Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s chances of returning as majority leader. Trump, of course, is already blaming everyone but himself as he eyes a campaign launch next week that will lack the springboard of a Republican landslide he would have claimed was all his doing. And the roaring reelection of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis presented Trump with a huge potential 2024 GOP primary headache.

Biden, meanwhile, seemed unusually upbeat for a president who may soon face a tsunami of subpoenas, investigations and even possible impeachment from a GOP House. He enjoyed calling out the conventional wisdom during a White House news conference on Wednesday afternoon. “While the press and the pundits were predicting a giant red wave, it didn’t happen,” he said.

When Biden meets world leaders in the coming days in Egypt and Bali, Indonesia, he can crow about escaping the epic first-term shellacking suffered by most presidents. He also put off an immediate inquest about his suitability to carry the Democratic banner into 2024, ahead of a vacation he said he’d like to take between Thanksgiving and Christmas with First Lady Jill Biden to consider his future.

Yet a loss is a loss. And CNN exit polls show only 30% of House race voters want a president with a low-40s approval rating, who will be 80 in a few weeks, to run for reelection in a campaign that could well coincide with the recession many economists fear. Biden would prefer another finding from those same polls, however, that showed Trump – with a 39% approval rating – is even less popular.