By John Ruberry
I was around for the 1994 and the 2010 Red Wave elections. And for the most part, they were pretty awesome, particularly the first one, when the Republican Party bulldozed the Democrats and captured the Senate after eight years of Democrat control, as well as the House of Representatives, after a record 52-year reign by the Dems. And while the GOP didn’t win the Senate in 2010, the Republicans gained an astounding 63 House seats in what is now known as the Tea Party election.
After both midterms, conservatives salivated at the prospect of the next presidential election. In 1992, Bill Clinton was victorious, it was believed, because George H.W. Bush ran a lackluster campaign–that was true–and votes for third-party candidate Ross Perot siphoned enough support from the GOP conservative base to elect the Democrat. In 2008, the feeling was that John McCain never had a chance against Barack Obama after the Great Recession market crash two months before Election Day. But McCain ran a lackluster campaign too.
Overconfidence, bordering on hubris, kicked in for the GOP after those Red Waves.
As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House.
Bubba had a come-to-Jesus moment–having Dick Morris in his camp helped–and Clinton after the ’94 midterms pivoted to the center by declaring, “The era of big government is over.” The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, widely-known as the Welfare Reform Bill, offered tangible proof.
After what Obama deemed “a shellacking” in 2010, Obama, as he does best, talked a good game–but he didn’t pivot. With no hope of getting unpopular legislation, such as cap-and-trade passed by the new GOP House, he channeled his charisma to win in 2012–as conservatives seethed. And ObamaCare didn’t go into effect until 2013.
Besides over-confidence hindering their White House chances, Republicans nominated country club-flavor Republicans, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, for president in 1996 and 2012, respectively. In essence, their campaign was, “I’m not the other guy.” Yawn.
As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House.
Election denial.
It’s time for the GOP to look at what went wrong this year, starting with election-denial. As I wrote in March, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump was not a free and fair election. Big Tech and media meddling in regard to suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, in my opinion, was the foremost reason. Richard M. Nixon was the victim of a suspicious presidential election tally in 1960. I was a child in 1968 and 1972, but I don’t recall reading about Nixon mentioning the 1960 race at all during his ’68 or ’72 successful presidential runs.
Deal with it. The Dems won in 2020 and we lost. Move on. If Trump runs in 2024, that needs to be his message. Most of the candidates in close races who said that Biden stole the election from Trump in 2020 were defeated. Election denial is toxic for Republicans.
The big winner in the midterms was Florida governor Ron DeSantis. He’s not an election denier and he has a solid list of accomplishments to point to after four years in office.
The new election playing field.
I loathe mail-in voting, “election season” instead of Election Day, and ballot drop-boxes. But these things aren’t going away. To prevail, Republicans have to adapt and find ways to perform better on the new playing field. Mail-in voting is a good place to start. Increasingly, the GOP is the party of private sector jobholders. Let’s say you’re a construction worker raising a family who is told by his boss, “Hey, I need you at this worksite tomorrow in Nebraska–it pays well.” But that worker hasn’t voted yet and Election Day is two days away. Meanwhile, in Blue Illinois, Election Day is a holiday for government workers.
What if it snows on Election Day? That happened in a Republican area in Nevada last Tuesday.
Shortly before Election Day in 2016, my mother was hospitalized. She had voted in every presidential election since 1956, but mom wasn’t able to vote for Trump, much to her disappointment. We need to reach out to seniors and, gently of course, convince them to utilize mail-in or early voting.
Republicans need to build on its increasing support among Hispanics and reach out to Asians. The GOP is the party of law and order. However, the media wing of the Democratic Party labels the phrase “law and order” as racist. So Republicans need to rebrand and become, let’s say, the “safety and security” party. Safety and security is an appeal that will resonate among all racial groups.
Tribalism.
If the increasingly frail and mentally feeble Joe Biden runs for reelection and wins renomination–the Democrats won’t have a strong campaigner like Clinton or Obama on the top of the ticket in ’24. And Biden has already said that he won’t pivot, as Bill Clinton did, to the center now that the midterms have passed.
Woo-hoo! We’re gonna win!
Slow down there, cowboy.
Republicans face disaster if they underestimate the support Biden will enjoy from the tribalist base of the Democrats. That tribe will vote every candidate who has a “D” next to their name. In the Chicago area, I live among millions of these people. They might wise up one day. Maybe they won’t. But as Dan Bongino said numerous times in the last week, “Things are just not bad enough yet for a lot of people to wake up from the Kool-Aid slumber.”
And it’s not just Illinois that is afflicted by Dem tribalism. Pennsylvanians chose a cognitively challenged far-left US Senate candidate, John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke this spring, over a mentally nimble Republican candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz. True, Oz could have run a better campaign.
Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 landslide win over Walter Mondale, won 49 states. But in the popular vote–yeah, I know, the Electoral College declares the victor–Mondale still collected more than 40 percent. In 2024, even if Biden is in worse physical and mental shape than Fetterman is, he’ll do much better, courtesy of tribalism, than Mondale did, in both the Electoral College and the popular vote.
Fetterman, if by some other-worldly convergence ends up as the Democrat nominee for president in 2024, could match Mondale’s popular vote percentage. I am dead serious about that. Tribalism is a tough nut to crack.
There is much to think about and much to do for the Republican Party. But at least the GOP won’t be overconfident in 2024. That might be the best news out of this Red Ripple election.
John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
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