Former President Donald Trump is threatening to campaign against Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) after Democrats passed their latest boondoggle spending bill. But congratulations are in order for Trump as well, because Democrats would never have accomplished this without his help.
Manchin became the 50th and last vote Democrats needed only because Republicans lost both Georgia Senate runoff elections in January 2021. And Republicans lost those runoffs because Trump was still throwing a temper tantrum after losing the 2020 presidential election.
Trump told Georgia voters that their elections were hopelessly rigged. Some of his allies even told Republicans not to vote. He spent all his time attacking the state’s Republican governor and secretary of state, ignoring both of the GOP senators he was supposed to be campaigning for and their Democratic opponents. Turnout in pro-Trump counties dropped substantially during the runoffs as a result.
Instead of Republicans rolling into the Biden presidency with a 52-48 Senate, Trump convinced his own voters to stay home, and the Senate was handed to Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). While Manchin has shot down several damaging pieces of legislation as a centrist Democrat, he is still a Democrat. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Republicans couldn’t rely on him, and yet Trump put the future of the country in his hands.
Of course, this wouldn’t have mattered if Republicans had held the House or the White House, but Trump oversaw those losses as well. House Democrats ran as a foil to Trump’s unpredictability. His failure to stay on message sunk any chance Republicans had of surviving 2018, and Democrats flipped 41 seats from the GOP — the party’s largest gain since Watergate.
On top of that, Trump’s failure to stay on message and run a focused campaign cost him, and the GOP, the veto power of the White House. As someone who spent over half his life in government, Joe Biden was the definition of “The Swamp” that Trump’s entire candidacy was based on opposing. Biden ran a basement campaign because he couldn’t string together three coherent sentences without a teleprompter, but Trump lost to him all the same.
Trump helped conservatives accomplish many goals in his four years as president, but he then turned around and helped push Democrats to power thanks to his lack of discipline and his desire to put himself before the movement. Biden’s worst nominees and the Democratic Party’s terrible legislation would not be possible without all Trump did for them. If anything, his good friend Schumer ought to send him a thank-you card.
