Turns out the Republicans are terrible at messaging
The Republicans are somewhat unified in their messaging during this election cycle, but that doesn’t change the fact that their messaging is terrible. The problem for the Republicans, as has been the case for the past several years, is that they’re pushing the kind of messaging Donald Trump wants to hear, as opposed to the kind of messaging that voters want to hear.
It was one thing to push pro-Trump nonsense during the midterm primary season. Of course, given that brazenly pro-Trump candidates like Mehmet Oz and JD Vance barely won their primaries over much lower profile Republican competitors, the pro-Trump messaging wasn’t particularly effective in the primaries. And now we’re in the general election.
Persuadable voters in the middle do not want the FBI and DOJ abolished; no matter what they think of these agencies, abolishing them sounds absurd and dangerous. And they do not want to hear Trump defended for having stolen classified documents; if anything, the search warrant carried out at Trump’s home has convinced voters in the middle that Trump is indeed the criminal that Democrats have always insisted he was.
So the Republicans are really blowing it when it comes to reaching persuadable general election voters in the middle – and their worsening poll numbers prove it. Instead the Republicans are trying to win the general election by pandering to the far right end of their base. That’s not a viable general election strategy in the swing states and swing districts that are going to decide the Senate and House majorities.
Then there’s the reality that Trump’s three illegitimate Supreme Court picks actually overturned Roe v. Wade, a travesty which upended the Republicans’ longtime strategy of campaigning on the promise to overturn Roe v. Wade without actually ever doing it. There have always been a large number of single-issue anti-abortion voters. But this ruling has created a far larger number of single-issue women’s rights voters. If there is any way for the Republicans to employ smart messaging about Roe v. Wade, they certainly haven’t found it.
Worse for the Republicans, they’re still pandering specifically to Donald Trump’s base, which – as we’ve seen over and over again for years now – does not turn out in elections that don’t have Trump’s name on the ballot. It’s as if the leading House and Senate Republican voices are less interested in winning the midterms, and more interested in keeping Trump placated on his way down so he doesn’t expose all their dirty secrets when he’s arrested.
After one party elects a new President, the other party usually has a cakewalk in the next midterms. So the 2022 election was supposed to be an easy one for the Republicans. Instead, what we’re seeing is that the Republicans are doing everything they can to try to forfeit the midterms – including pushing the kind of messaging that’s aimed at Donald Trump personally, not at general election voters. Combine this with the recent revelation that the Democrats are great at getting things done and are actually quite good at messaging (when they can manage to get that messaging heard over top of the media’s nonstop shouts of “Democrats are bad at messaging”), and suddenly the midterms are competitive.
