STILL CRESTING...:

MSNBC's Ari Melber] noted (using a lower projection of 35 House seats gained) that this was the greatest wave election in four decades for the Democrats. The only other time the party won such a big night was during President Richard Nixon's most scandalous years.

"Democratic House gains keep growing and the most favorable Senate map for one party in a century could end up close to a status quo reshuffling," said NPR politics reporter Scott Detrow. "This was not a split decision election."

As results continue to pour in, the GOP's Senate victory is looking more hollow. They defeated Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO). But Florida Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson looks poised to head to a recount against Republican Rick Scott, leaving the race in doubt. In Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema's race Marta McSally is still undecided, but it is leaning Sinema's way. And Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) was ousted by Democrat Jacky Rosen.

"There was a moment, around 10:30pm EST on Tuesday night when I thought GOP was gonna pick up SIX senate seats," said MSNBC's Chris Hayes. "They mayyyy end up with only a net gain of ONE." (FiveThirtyEight is projecting a GOP gain in the Senate of 2 seats.)

Some of the most devastating races for Democrats actually are having upsides. Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum's race appears to be heading for a recount. Stacey Abrams in Georgia is still fighting against her extremely dubious opponent for a fair vote count, and she could end up in a runoff. And though Beto O'Rourke lost decisively in Texas against Ted Cruz, he outperformed the almost all his polling and came within three points of his Republican opponent in what was thought to have been a quintessentially red state. Texas may now be considered purple.

The Washington Post's Paul Waldman pointed out, too, that Democratic gains at the state-level were extremely impressive.

"You've probably heard that over the eight years Barack Obama was president, Democrats lost a net of almost a thousand seats in state legislatures," Waldman wrote. "Which is bad, but last night Democrats gained about 300 seats, so they're well on their way to reversing those losses."

The DLCC, in fact, reported that it had flipped 350 state legislature seats by Wednesday morning -- and it may end up closer to 400.

He also noted that, even if Abrams and Gillum don't come from behind, Democrats have flipped seven governorships in their direction, while Republicans flipped none.

Democrats appear poised to pick up between 35 and 40 seats in the House, once the last races are tallied, according to strategists in both parties. That would represent the biggest Democratic gain in the House since the post-Watergate election of 1974, when the party picked up 49 seats three months after Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency.

Republicans will gain seats in the Senate, but with races in Florida and Arizona still to be called, their pre-election majority of 51 seats will end up as low as 52 or as high as 54. Meanwhile, Democrats gained seven governorships, recouping in part losses sustained in 2010 and 2014, and picked up hundreds of state legislative seats, where they had suffered a virtual wipeout in the previous two midterm elections.

The Democrats' gains this week are still far short of what Republicans accomplished in their historic victories of 1994 and 2010. But they would eclipse the number of seats Democrats gained in 2006, the last time the party recaptured control of the House, as well as the 26-seat gain in 1982, when the national unemployment rate was at 10 percent. This year, the election took place with the unemployment rate at just 3.7 percent.

Day by day, the outlook for Democrats in the House has improved. At the offices of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, already high spirits have been rising all week as more races fell into the party's column. One joke that has been making the rounds there goes like this: "This is actually turning out to be more of a Hanukkah than a Christmas election," meaning day after day of gifts, rather than just one.

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