A letter to the WSJ by Jim LeMunyon

[question everything]

The miscalculation Republican leadership made in 2020 was to think enough voters would vote their economic self-interest to re-elect Donald Trump, while setting aside their frustration with Donald Trump’s unpresidential manner and style. Many voters did this, but many did not, and one only needs to look to the suburbs of Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Phoenix for the evidence.

Republicans had fair warning after seeing suburban Republicans routed in places like Virginia in 2017 and in suburban congressional districts nationally in 2018. As one of the Virginia Republican legislators who lost in 2017, I stood at the polls on Election Day shaking hands with voters. By 10 a.m. I had lost count of the number of voters who thanked me for doing a fine job but said they would vote against me to “send a message to Trump.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elections-of-2017-and-2018-should-have-alerted-gop-11615145752 (subscription)

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I think that if he is right, we need to change our country wide approach for the 2022 midterm, not to think that 2018 will be repeated.

[Skittles]

1. JAYSUS, that picture of Trump

he literally looks....BASTED

[dutch777]

2. Absolutely...2022 is much different than 2018 and we have little time to refine messaging and get

it focused in the correct places. Given Dems were all essentially running against Trump or Trumpism in 2020 and we did not do better in the House and Senate, not to mention state races, we cannot assume anything positive or even maintaining the status quo unless we find broadly resounding messages and really dig in at the grass roots. What Stacey Abrams and others did in GA was great and we need to work that hard and be that focused and suigeneris in the states and districts. The optics from DC, the DNC and the coasts have proven foggy at best in 2018 and 2020. We need to flip more purple to blue and more red to purple and broaden our majorities in the House and Senate.