How should we respond to the unpleasant but expected Blue Wave that washed over the country on Election Day, 2025?

The first issue is clearly that the Republican Party has a turnout problem in off-year elections. A lot of the new MAGA Trump voters are centrist or liberal-leaning independents who have joined the GOP. These voters don’t get engaged beyond the presidential elections. Republican activists must concentrate their efforts on getting them to vote more. Better campaign strategies have to invest in more than liking President Trump and wanting to reverse the damage done by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Those two are out of the picture now, and there are still serious social, cultural, and political problems that voters want resolved.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the specific elections that pundits had placed in the spotlight as bellwethers for the GOP.

Virginia 

After the June primary, the polling was always trending badly for the statewide Republican candidates. I spoke with a vocal parental rights activist in Loudoun County, and she was convinced that Winsome Sears was going to go down in flames. She had alienated the MAGA base by turning on Donald Trump and endorsing Ron DeSantis for president in 2023. She had bluntly, with little foresight, declared that Donald Trump had turned into a liability for the Republican Party, and it was time for him to step aside. To the best of my knowledge, Sears made no overt efforts to amend or apologize for her remarks, and she didn’t take any steps to repair the damage done between her and many of the Republicans in the Commonwealth of Virginia, or with Trump, for that matter.

Beyond the Trump alienation factor, we need to comment on something specific during the general election. The major debate between Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger and Sears was a turning point, but not in a good way. Sears gave one of the most tiresome, abusive, and frustrating debate performances I have ever seen from an elected official. When she confronted Spanberger, she repeatedly interrupted her, doubling down and bringing up the offensive, violent text messages that the attorney general candidate Jay Jones had made about other Republican officials and their children. On account of her frequent disruptions and interruptions during the debate, she ended up looking desperate, like the losing candidate (which she was), while her Democratic opponent remained quiet about that one issue, stayed calm, and focused on her set of campaign promises.

And that was another problem for Winsome: She didn’t give a broad positive vision for the Commonwealth. She didn’t speak to mainstream concerns the way Governor Glenn Youngkin had done. Her campaign videos included a great deal of recycled diversity talking points: “I am black. I am female. I am an immigrant. I also happen to be a Republican. Vote for me just because!” I don’t understand why so many Republican candidates continue to play this hollow diversity game when the MAGA base of the Republican Party and the general electorate are moving past all of this! The 1990s called, Winsome, and they want their campaign slogans back!

What is deeply troubling, however, is that the Commonwealth voters elected Crazy Jay Jones, the murderous AG candidate, over a qualified and competent incumbent. Republican Jason Miyares accomplished a fantastic term as attorney general. He went after election integrity issues, he invested every resource in his power to protect children in public schools, and he was cracking down on rising crime, especially in Northern Virginia. He was an excellent attorney general, and he should have been elected again. For this failure, I place the blame exclusively on the shoulders of Virginia voters. They should be ashamed of themselves for having elected such a creepy man with murderous tendencies. This is a moral failure of the voters, proving that Virginia is turning into another Maryland. It’s tragic, but true.

New York City

The Big Apple is in Big Trouble, but we all knew this would happen. All the major polls showed that Zohran Mamdani was going to be the next mayor. All of the quibbling and machinations from the non-Mamdani cohorts were just whistling past the graveyard. Every well-connected pundit, left and right, unjustly condemned Republican Curt Sliwa as a spoiler, and they falsely claimed that voting for him would be a vote for Mamdani. The truth is that the votes for Cuomo and Sliwa put together still wouldn’t have overcome the Muslim from Uganda. The tough truth is that a lot of woke, liberal, progressive, out-of-touch, embittered, regressive leftist voters dominate New York City. Their hatred of Trump is more important than the future well-being of the neighborhoods. They wanted a communist, so they got a communist. They wanted a radical, pro-jihad Muslim, so they got one. No one can ignore the terrible choices, not just slim pickings, put before the voters. I can’t believe anybody would have voted for Andrew Cuomo, one of the worst governors in the country, who did so much damage to New York City during the COVID lockdowns. It was a terrible election, a bad reflection on a very diseased urban core, plus a disaffected Republican Party that was not making any inroads to grow beyond the Trump slogans and the previous 2024 election highs.

NYC, you chose to be a rotten apple, and you deserve all the consequences. No big surprise there.

New Jersey

The Garden State results were surprising. Many believed that Jack Ciattarelli could win. He was networking with elected officials across the state, including many Democrats who switched parties to support him. Labor unions, usually Democratic, lined up for him. Trump supported him. New Jersey Republicans worked very hard, and I know that the turnout was much larger than expected compared to 2021. Kamala Harris did very poorly in Election 2024, but Republican campaigners and prognosticators need to understand that elections in different years and different cycles are really completely different animals. We have to stop looking at prior elections as the basic template for the future ones. That approach just doesn’t work anymore. These results need a lot more attention.

Reflection

Are all of these election results a repudiation of Donald Trump? No, because his approval ratings are high. Are these election results responses to the government shutdown? I don’t accept that, either, because a lot of the polling has been holding the Democrats accountable.

Trumpism remains a great vision, but the messaging requires packaging in a way that resonates with the voters in front of us today. It’s not 2024 anymore. We’re heading into 2026, and there needs to be an aggressive policy vision that resonates with voters, one that ignores and overcomes most of the empty ideological bickering over foreign policy, personality issues, and social media.

The problem comes back to the Republican turnout machine, which needs improvement. Republicans need to understand that they have to maintain a winning message and a winning organization, whether President Trump is running at the top of the ticket or not. Republicans cannot get comfortable with trusting that a spirit of Trumpism or a veneer of Trump sentiment will pull them across the finish line for every future election.