Well, the primaries have come and gone, and the experts are all passing judgment on the implications of this latest leg of the horse race we call American politics. Given that November’s midterms are likely to be a referendum on Obama and the Democrats’ handling of what has to be one of the toughest honeymoons in the history of the presidency (Lincoln might have had it tougher. Maybe.), everyone is reading the tea leaves looking for signs of what’s to come.

While it’d be a stretch to call me an expert on anything, I thought it might be fun to sum up the things I took from this election cycle. Without further ado, The Clear and Absolutely Incontrovertible Facts About the 2010 Primaries:

Money can’t buy you votes…

No, seriously. Here in California, voters overwhelmingly struck down the Taxpayer’s Right to Vote Act, better known as the Pacific Gas & Electric’s Right to Your Money Act. This despite the utilities giant spending more than $46 million on maintaining its stranglehold on electricity protecting our precious voting rights. The opposition, by contrast, spent a fraction of that. I guess it IS possible to have a ballot measure so brazenly self-serving that not even an innocuous-sounding name can save it. Color me surprised.

In South Carolina, Alvin Greene snatched the Democratic nod from a former four-term former state legislature who outspent him more than 18 to 1. Political strategy genius? Not so much. Green didn’t have any campaign to speak of. As far as anyone can tell, he’s just some guy with $10,000 burning a hole in his pocket who for some reason took it into his head to run for Senate. I guess stranger things have been bought on a whim— look at the success of the Snuggie.

In both cases, I’m guessing the opposition was counting on the weight of their fat wallets to crush the opposition. PG&E is certainly familiar with this concept, and Vic Rawl probably thought $186,000 was enough to defeat a candidate who could best be described as “some guy.” But this election proves that sometimes not even the almighty dollar is enough to overcome the advantage of not being transparently evil, or having your name come first in the alphabet.

…Except when it can

Going back to California, this was one of the most expensive Republican primaries ever. With a number of billionaires vying for the GOP nod, candidates were spending money like they was Ju from D4L. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman put up more than $80 million of her own money in her bid for the Governor’s Seat, while her Silicon Valley cohort Carly Fiorina spent $5.5 million of her personal fortune on the race for the Senate. By contrast, lesser billionaire Steve Poizner could only foot the bill for $25 million for his campaign, and Tom Campbell spent whatever meager income he gets from his job as a professional Meg Whitman look-alike.

The result? Whitman swept Poizner in the primary, and we can expect more Demon Sheep from Fiorina when she goes up against Boxer in the Fall. So, all things considered, it looks like it is still easier for a rich person to enter a public office than someone with less. Eat that, Mark 10:25.

The Republican Party is no longer the party of old white men…

As CNN has noted, women were the big winners this election, and perhaps surprisingly, the Grand Olde Party was a big part of that. Whitman and Fiorina are big on the list of prominent female winners, but there’s also Sharron Angle in Nevada, who did the unthinkable by unseating an incumbent. In South Carolina we saw, gasp, a winning republican who was both non-male and non-white. Although Indian-American Nikki Haley is currently in a run-off with Gresham Barrett, she beat out both of the losing candidates combined and nobody is kidding themselves about his chances.

…That still doesn’t exactly make them progressive

Haley is not, surprisingly, an establishment Republican. A Tea Party conservative with a Palin endorsement, Haley was actually seen as a threat to Barrett, who was the establishment’s heir apparent. So Republicans in South Carolina employed the traditional, time-honored method of dealing with an uppitty female, and called her a whore. Not to be outdone, State Senator Jake Knotts decided to resort to blatant racism in his efforts to discredit Haley

Oh well. Baby steps.