The Greatest Story Never Told — The Democratic Winning Streak
Ever since convicted felon Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, the GOP and the mainstream press have treated him as some kind of savant who has his finger firmly on the pulse of public opinion. The press continues to treat Trump as invincible and is addicted to the false narrative that Biden and the Democrats are doomed.
The reality is that Trump and MAGA are overrated by the polls and the elite pundits. The history of the Trump era clearly demonstrates that Trump and the MAGA Republican movement are stone cold losers.
Trump lost the popular vote by three million votes in 2016. However, Trump won the presidency with narrow victories in three key battleground states by a mere 77,000 votes. “Trump seemed to pull an inside straight by narrowly winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin while losing the popular vote by three million. We now know, Trump committed 34 felonies to win that election. Without these crimes, he seems almost certain to have lost to Hillary Clinton.” Marc Elias
The Republicans haven’t had a strong election cycle since 2016. That cycle was a fluke thanks to Trump’s crimes, the mainstream media, Putin and Comey. Trump just backed into the presidency when he expected to lose.
In 2017, the Democrats recaptured governor’s mansions in Virginia and New Jersey, as well as numerous legislative seats.
During a time of peace and prosperity ushered in by Obama’s policies, The MAGA-fied Republican Party lost the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. The Democrats picked up a whopping 40 seats in the House. The Democrats achieved the biggest victory in the House elections since their triumph in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
In 2019, Democratic candidates won gubernatorial races in Louisiana and Kentucky after Trump campaigned for the Republicans. In red Kentucky, the incumbent governor was knocked off after he adopted Trump’s toxic personality and tried to kick thousands of people off insurance.
Disaster struck for the world and the United States when the pandemic hit in 2020. The convicted felon blew the country’s response to the pandemic and was responsible for hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. As a result, Trump lost the White House and the Republican Party lost the Senate in 2020–21. Trump was the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over the loss of the White House, the House and the Senate in a single term.
The Democrats defied the Republican and mainstream press predictions of a red wave in 2022. Joe Biden and the Democrats had the best mid-term results of any president and incumbent party since 1962. The Democrats picked up a seat in the Senate and 7 governor’s mansions. The Republicans fearlessly predicted they would gain 60 seats in the U.S. House but only emerged with an unworkable and nightmarish two seat majority.
In 2022, Trump endorsed candidates lost competitive statewide elections in Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Moreover, the Democrats secured governorships in Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin, among other states.
Democrats overperformed again the following year in Kentucky, Virginia and Ohio. Democratic governor Andy Beshear was easily re-elected in ruby red Kentucky against a Trump anointed MAGA Republican. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin staked his political future on a 15 week abortion ban in the hopes that victory would elevate him into a viable presidential candidate. Instead, the Virginia GOP was routed and lost control of both houses of the legislature.
Since 2016,” wrote Michael Podhorzer, a former political director for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., in a post for his newsletter in the summer of 2023, “Republicans have lost 23 of the 27 elections in the five states everyone agrees Democratic hopes in the Electoral College and the Senate depend on.” (Those five states are Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.)
This dynamic is something we’ve seen carry over to 2024. Tom Suozzi dramatically outperformed public polling in his big win in a U.S. House race in Long Island, New York. In Alabama, a Democrat won a state senate seat in the Birmingham area by 25 points in a legislative district that Trump carried by 1 point in 2020.
The pattern of Democratic over performance carries over to the present time. There was an Ohio U.S. House special election on June 11 in which the Republican won a red CD by 8 points. In contrast, Trump carried the same CD by 29 points in 2020. The Democrat in this race was outspent by a margin of $700,000 to $25,000.
Daniel Donner of Daily Kos found that “special elections have indeed proven to be useful in analyzing the election environment. There is still a good long-term correlation between the results of special elections and November elections.”
Trump has never once gotten more votes than his political opponent. Ever. And under his stewardship, the Republican Party has had historic electoral defeats in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. The Democratic winning streak has continued into 2024.
“When we’re running against the generic Republican, our races are always really close, but there’s no such thing…These guys are weird. Once they start running, their weirdness shows up.” Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota.
“When people go vote and have to make a real choice between MAGA and better alternatives, MAGA melts and loses ground. The ugliness of MAGA makes it too hard for many people to go there.” Simon Rosenberg
“It’s a bit stunning to me that the central obsession of political journalism right now isn’t about coming to an understanding of why Republicans have been so badly underperforming/Dems so significantly overperforming in elections since Dobbs, and what it all means for 2024.” Simon Rosenberg.
What’s been lost — or if not lost then obscured — in the constant attention to Trump’s followers is that the American electorate outside of the deep red states is consistently anti-MAGA. There is an anti-MAGA majority in the battleground states and the blue states.
Be confident going forward. Take nothing for granted. Keep working hard.
It’s America or convicted felon Trump. Choose wisely.