Despite not being on the ballot, former President Donald Trump was the biggest loser of the midterm elections. Trump-backed candidates lost races all across the country, while Republicans who were attacked by the former president saw great victories. The result was that, with the exception of substantial gains in Florida and New York, the GOP performed poorly, barely clinching the House majority and failing to take control of the Senate.
The lesson the GOP ought to learn from these disappointing results is this: If Trump wants to help Republicans, he needs to keep his mouth shut and step down from the 2024 presidential race.
Trump is vulnerable in the polls, and Democrats know that. That’s why they spent $19 million in the midterm elections to help Trump-backed candidates win Republican primaries. They see Trumpist candidates as much easier to defeat, and they were right.
In the New Hampshire Senate race, for example, Democrats paid for ads to help Trump-backed Don Bolduc win the Republican primary because they believed he would be an easier opponent for the Democratic incumbent in the general election. Their strategy paid off. The Trump-loving Republicans took the bait, and now Democrats will keep that seat.
Bolduc wasn’t the only poor candidate Trump endorsed in the primaries. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, is an inauthentic, out-of-touch, lifelong Democrat who was pretending to be a Conservative. Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who ran as a pro-family candidate, was marred by scandals and had his own family turn out against him. Others were bad communicators or had extreme views.
Trump wasn’t concerned with whether these negative features would affect his candidates’ abilities to compete in a general election. All that mattered was that he could control them.
In Georgia, Walker trailed against his Democratic opponent Raphael Warnock. Meanwhile, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans who were constantly bashed by the former president, won reelection by a landslide. The three of them ran in the exact same state and appealed to the exact same voter base but had completely different results.
Not even close allies can escape Trump’s ire. Ahead of the midterm elections, the former president launched unprovoked and harsh attacks against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who went on to win reelection by almost 20 points.
Trump is also unable to move on from the 2020 election and lashes out at any Republican who does. He claimed, for example, that Bolduc lost his race because he abandoned Trump’s stolen-election narrative. The reality is that Bolduc lost because he didn’t do it earlier. Trump wants to be the center of attention even if it hurts everybody he’s trying to help. He has no agenda but himself.
When the issues are the issues, Republicans win. When the issue is Trump, Republicans lose. Democrats have no plan to fight inflation, crime, or illegal immigration, but by making Trump the main issue of the campaign, Democrats successfully prevented this year’s anticipated red wave. Republicans must face reality: Electoral success is no longer possible with Trump on the ticket. It’s time to move on from him.
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Sam Neves is a Daily Caller contributor, filmmaker, and comedian.
