Wake Up Call

The midterms were bad, but 2028 will determine if America survives

Midterms are usually bad for the ruling party. These were especially bad.

The bottom line comes down to four words: people hate this economy. They hated it in 2020 and they hated it in 2024. They hated what COVID and our reaction to it did to prices, to housing availability, and to a thousand other things, even before gas prices shot up. And they’ve consistently voted against the party in power.

There were other factors, including bad candidates, Democrats successfully weaponizing Epstein against Trump, turning a non-issue like data centers into an issue, and the standbys of voter fraud and non-citizen voting. But the economy is the bottom line. The sitting party usually gets wiped out in the midterms. The only question was how badly, and this was a massive wipeout.

Populism

Credit where credit is due. The Trump administration aggressively tackled things conservatives have demanded action on forever, from illegal alien deportations to cutting back the federal government to cracking down on fraud and rolling back DEI. Progress was limited on some of these, but the efforts were serious. Doing things in the real world while the other side controls much of the judiciary is a lot harder than typing on a keyboard. It wasn’t a flawless performance, but name any past administration that even came close.

The problem is that while these issues were compelling for the conservative base and much less so for everyone else. Apart from DOGE, which was unfortunately scrapped, and the fraud crackdown, the administration failed to connect its wins to the bread-and-butter issues people care about. Affordability efforts like Trump accounts and Trump RX came out half-baked and didn’t make people feel they were benefiting. Tariffs, which I supported, were never properly implemented, certainly not in a way people could feel. If the administration had paired its focus on unwinding Russiagate and setting new immigration precedents with deregulation aimed at lowering prices, 2026 might have gone differently.

Change

MAGA was a populist movement because it promised to fundamentally reform how D.C. worked, end the corruption, toss out wokeness, end mass migration and make the economy boom.

In a word: change.

The first Trump term tackled some of this only to get sideswiped by COVID. The second was far more focused on policy revamping, and much of that was good, but it mattered little to a public still unhappy about the economy. The change message got lost along the way. Economic messaging stopped being revolutionary and turned conventional (company X may open a factory in Indiana), and the edgy rhetoric became detached from the MAGA promise of revolutionary change.

Going into the midterms, Republicans had a chance to campaign on radically deconstructing and transforming the government. Instead they made fairly conventional pitches about economic upsides, which left MAGA playing defense. Meanwhile, Democrats cobbled together their own populism by ranting about data centers and Epstein. Did it work? At least partly. Democrats made the change argument, and Republicans answered that Democrats would make things worse. That’s true, but it’s not as exciting as change. Democrats ran on affordability without having an actual affordability plan beyond welfare, but plenty of voters were voting against rather than for, just as in 2020 and 2024, to express their dissatisfaction.

Some within MAGA want to pitch Socialism 2.0. It didn’t work in the Trump administration, and it won’t work in 2028. Democrats can pitch socialism better than Republicans can, and given a choice between real socialism and fake socialism, voters will take the real thing. MAGA without revolutionary change is just a bunch of podcasters running on a Republican version of socialism. Taking the Jeb! agenda and adding some influencers and X snark isn’t MAGA, isn’t revolutionary, and won’t build a movement.

Bad Candidates Matter

The economy was the top reason, but some losses were completely avoidable, and bad candidates were part of the problem.

Randomly running Lindsey Graham’s sister, who didn’t seem to know the job or why she was running, cost Republicans a Senate seat in Georgia. In Ohio, Republicans ran a slick candidate who seemed to leave ooze on everything he touched. In the last weeks he turned to a barrage of ads featuring J.D. Vance to shore up Republican support, and he dug into his opponent’s mother and childhood abuse. He lost the governorship. Ohio Republicans went for Vivek while shutting out local candidates with legislative experience whom voters might actually have chosen over a drunken local version of Fauci. In Texas, Ken Paxton was great on policy, but his long record of ugly behavior put off not just the establishment but plenty of grassroots Texans too. By the time he was running an ad from his ex-wife, it was bad.

None of this had to happen. These were bad choices, made at least partly in D.C. Yes, establishment candidates running underwhelming campaigns took a beating too, and this was a Democrat wave. But the people who inflicted Darlene and Vivek on us were hardly grassroots Tea Party types. They were the consultant class, even if they wore MAGA hats. They selected off-putting candidates, foisted them on us, and lost badly. Hopefully this is the last we see of Vivek. Ever.

It’s Not Over

The midterms were training wheels. In 2028, we’re playing for all the marbles. We can only take so many losses. If Democrats win a trifecta in 2028, we’ll be a lot closer to a radicalized party rigging the system through a national popular vote for president, adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, and packing the Supreme Court, leaving few options between enduring tyranny and civil war.

So we either learn our lessons or let it ride. If the people in D.C. don’t learn them, Republican voters and donors will have the chance to.

Stop letting insiders pick our candidates. A handful of consultants in D.C. shouldn’t choose our Senate candidates, especially ridiculously awful ones. Primaries should be a competitive way of producing the best candidates, not a way for party factions to maintain control over the party.

Drop the luxury beliefs. Chief among them is the idea that we lost only because of voter fraud. There is plenty of fraud, but there always is in Democrat areas. Trump won in 2024 because he beat the margin of fraud. Blaming fraud for every loss is like blaming the weather. It’s an ongoing problem that needs to be cracked, but outside California and a few major Democrat strongholds where there simply aren’t legitimate elections anymore, it doesn’t explain individual defeats or massive waves.

Reboot. MAGA remains a compelling idea, but if the Trump administration is still unpopular in 2027, the 2028 slate shouldn’t include members of it. You can’t run a change campaign with incumbents, especially disliked ones. Trump will always be a compelling figure, much like Reagan, but he isn’t running for a third term. Much of his appeal was that he wasn’t a political insider, and if we want that energy in 2028, we need to look beyond people who seem too at home in D.C.

The alternative is a “good government” message. It didn’t work in 2026, and unless the economy improves, it won’t work in 2028.

Republicans can run on one of two messages:

1. Radical change

2. “Raise your hand if things are better for you now than they were four years ago.”

If Republicans can’t credibly run on the second, they’ll need a major reboot with reformist candidates unconnected to the current administration. Either way, the messaging has to center on the economy: use the power of government to cut industry costs and trade those savings for price cuts, and blame the new Democrat Congress for doing nothing on affordability. If the next two years are more of the same oblivious lame-duck focus on policy wins, 2028 will be really bad too.

And if 2028 ends with a Democrat trifecta, that will likely mean the end of America.