Yes, there were elections yesterday. However, my polling place had only once race to weigh in on, which was for a seat on the Anoka-Hennepin school board. The candidate whom I supported (Linda Hoekman, who also appeared as a guest on my radio show) emerged victorious......so I had that going for me!
If you're a Republican (which I am not; I bailed in 2016), Tuesday evening was a clarifying night for the national party. There are some areas of the country where anything less than bowing to touch the hem of Donald Trump's garment is tantamount to disloyalty. In other areas, GOP candidates who work overtime to disassociate from Trump (i.e. Virginia) still wind up having the stink of the orange crazed loser.
In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin and the GOP ran a flawless campaign and wound up not just failing to capture the state senate but losing the state house — something no one saw coming. The Democrats in that state ran on a campaign of their willingness to work with Youngkin, who is hugely popular. They also attacked every Republican as an election denier and “MAGA.” It worked.
But this isn’t just about or really even about Donald Trump.
The reality is that the GOP as a national party is dead. It is now a conglomeration of several regional parties. In parts of the country, Republicans must run wrapped in the MAGA label as Donald Trump candidates. In other parts of the country, they must run as far from Trump as possible. That renders the GOP a regional party of divergent views that must then assemble a coalition of disparate and often incompatible values.
For all the polling that shows Joe Biden doing a terrible job and people not liking Biden, the GOP might just be too divided to win nationally at this point. In fact, Joe Biden is hugely unpopular, and that should spell doom for his party. But that is not happening in the actual elections.
Some of you will conclude that means the elections are all being stolen. If so, you might as well check out of politics now and let the rest of us try to win.
So is there a way forward for the Grand Ol' Party? Per Erick, 2024 looks to be the make or break year.
At this point, the only way to fix the GOP is to get through 2024. Either Trump will be the nominee or not. If he is not, the GOP has a chance to reset with a new face in charge who can assemble a broader coalition. If Trump is the nominee and wins, it suggests doom for the GOP in the 2026 midterms because we now have multiple midterms where Trump voters do not turn out to vote except for Trump. But, in the meantime, it would be a win for the presidency, which the GOP will take. If Trump loses, the GOP gets to fight over the rubble and find a new standard bearer to rebuild the party in their image.
The problem, however, is that if Trump loses, he and his supporters will again insist it was stolen, and his supporters will also demand the future standard bearer be close enough to Trump that whoever it is further alienates suburban white voters, possibly without being able to replace those voters with non-white working-class voters.
As I wrote about earlier this week, Trump's only chance to emerge victorious next year is if President Joe Biden inexplicably makes it to Election Day. If Biden is not up to the campaign grind in '24 (which, again, I contend he will not be), Dems will revert to their 2020 strategy in attempting to find the most appealing nominee to oust Trump. Who that would be, I have no idea.
If indeed it's true that the majority of Republican voters want an alternative to Trump, the results of Tuesday evening offer no better evidence that any plans of coalescing behind a non-Trump candidate need to happen posthaste.
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