Most pundits predicted a pretty good shellacking of Democrats in the midterm but that never materialized. The Dems held the Senate and lost only a few seats in the house. At present we see a lot of finger pointing going on within the Republican Party. Was it Trump? McConnell? Rick Scott? The Hobbs decision?

The way I see it, there were 4 main reasons. 1) Trump as kingmaker picked some terrible candidates. 2) Women broke hard for Democrats because of the Dobbs decision. 3) Gen Z turned out in big numbers which coincided with the 65+ crowd having fewer people on the voting rolls. 4) People rejected mean.

We don’t have to spend any time on the lack of candidate quality for Republican Senate races. Oz and Walker are bottom of the barrel, end of story. The Dobbs decision is a classic case of “careful what you wish for.” After 50 years of trying, republicans finally overturned Roe v. Wade at a time when 70% of the country supported abortion with some restrictions. Republicans underestimated the fallout from the Dobbs decision big time.

Gen Z turned out in big numbers and broke for Democrats 70-30. Of all the issues republicans need to deal with in their post-mortem this one has to be the most concerning. It’s not going to get any better in 2024, in fact it’ll get worse for them.

Lastly, voters rejected mean. Marjorie Taylor Green and Kari Lake and many of the election denier crowd came off as just plain mean. Nasty, nasty politics in an effort to be even more Trumpier than Trump himself. Bombastic behavior played well to the crowds in 2016, but after 6 years people are tired of it and have had enough.