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When John Boehner suddenly retired in 2015, members of the House Freedom Caucus showed up at speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy\u2019s office with a list of demands: In exchange for their support, they wanted McCarthy to name one of their own to a senior leadership position and embrace rules changes that empowered conservatives.\xa0\nIf he refused, they told him, they would band together to block him from securing the needed 218 votes to be speaker. But McCarthy was unwilling to subjugate his power in order to appease a splinter faction, and ultimately, the California Republican dropped his bid for his dream job, paving the way for Paul Ryan's rise.\xa0\nYet seven years later, McCarthy once again finds his dream held hostage by the same group of hardliners. Thanks to the GOP\u2019s lackluster midterm performance, he is seeking to preside over what appears likely to be an extremely thin majority \u2014 a scenario that hands massive leverage to the far right.\nAnd on Tuesday night at the election watch party for Nevada Democrats on the Vegas Strip, aides to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto were cautiously optimistic about her prospects for victory.\nThe campaign\u2019s main concern was whether their Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, would prematurely declare victory and throw the post-election vote-counting period into chaos. As Laxalt\u2019s strong rural vote came in, he overtook Cortez Masto in the count, and Democrats\u2019 concerns increased. But so far their fears have been misplaced.\xa0\nIn 2022, this counts as a positive development for American elections. Candidates are largely refraining from using the seesaw nature of vote-counting to sow doubts about the results, as Trump infamously did in 2020.\nWhat hasn\u2019t changed since 2020 is that Nevada (and Arizona and California and many other states) take days to finish counting. While still trailing Laxalt, Cortez Masto\u2019s chances of victory improved Wednesday, with the majority of the outstanding vote consisting of mail ballots from Nevada\u2019s urban centers, which are Democratic strongholds.\nSubscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletter\nRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.