Democrats swept to victory in a city (New York) with an 85% Democratic voter registration. They buried the Republicans in a sky-blue state (New Jersey) that rarely elects a Republican, and relied on 70-75% support in Washington border counties with their massive pool of federal government workers to elect a governor in Virginia.
I’m not exactly sure what they’re celebrating. Perhaps it’s how they flipped the script on the economy that they, themselves, were responsible for making a mess of. They promised to make life “affordable” again after adopting policies that made life unaffordable for the previous four years. It was classic political ju-jitsu as Democrats turned the tables on Republicans.
What happened to the GOP?
“Complacency was part of the problem. Republican voters were happy with the Trump administration and stayed home. Most Democrats weren’t and turned out,” wrote Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal.
The Democrats pushed all the right buttons to get their voters angry enough to get off the couch and vote. At the most basic level, elections are about getting more of your supporters to the polls than the other candidate. The Democrats’ ground game outperformed the GOP’s get-out-the-vote efforts nationwide, and it showed in the results.
And the GOP has to learn that screaming “communist” and “socialist” at run-of-the-mill Democrats doesn’t move even die-hard MAGA voters. Explaining why a Democrat’s policies will raise costs or hurt jobs and offering a constructive, forward-looking agenda is a much better approach. Americans want to know Republicans are making life more affordable, communities safer and the economy stronger.
Most concerning for the GOP, voters’ decisions Tuesday were certainly a result of their disapproval of Mr. Trump and his policies. The RealClearPolitics average that day had him at 43.4% approve, 54.4% disapprove. He has even worse numbers on the economy, foreign policy and inflation.
“Affordability” will be the buzzword for the 2026 midterms. The Democrats have a head start on framing the issue, but it now appears the White House is going to go all in on selling some kind of ‘affordability agenda.
James Blair, the political director for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and the RNC, told Politico, “The president is very keyed into what’s going on, and he recognizes, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there, and I think you’ll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living.”
“Why did Zohran Mamdani do so well last night? He relentlessly focused on affordability,” he said. “People talk about communists, they can say all these things, but the fact is he was talking about the cost of living.”
Six in ten Virginians in the CNN exit poll said the economy was “excellent” or “good.” However, “8 in 10 voters said they were ‘holding steady’ or ‘falling behind’ financially, with a majority of those voters supporting Spanberger — who campaigned around affordability and against Trump’s economic policies,” ABC News reports.
Republicans Jack Ciattarelli of New Jersey and Winsome Earle-Sears of Virginia, who lost to Sherrill and Spanberger on Tuesday, misread the electorate, Blair said. Sherrill’s ads were overwhelmingly positive and centered on pocketbook issues like lowering power costs.
“Jack didn’t really talk about that,” Blair said. “He talked about taxes, and he won the tax vote, but he didn’t address those key issues of affordability very effectively. He was mostly talking generically about change to Jersey. And I’m not denigrating Jack, but it was not in line necessarily with what voters were saying. Two, in Virginia, over half of Winsome Sears’ ads talked about transgender. And it’s not even the top five issues, according to voters.”
The bottom line is, as Blair pointed out, individual Republican candidates badly misread the electorate’s concerns. The GOP was a step slow in adapting to the new political reality.
If Blair is any indication for the future, Republicans are not going to make that mistake in 2026.
The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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