The special elections of April 1st have gotten lost in the sound and fury of Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs and the stock market dump, but we need to learn their lessons because we’re going to be dealing with the question of how to win elections with a new Trump coalition long after our 401(k)s have quit nosediving. Remember that November 2026 is everything – if the House of Representatives gets taken by the Democrats, or we lose seats in the Senate such that the Murkowski wing becomes decisive, the Trump administration, and America, are screwed.
The fact is that we are the in-party, and the out-party has some significant advantages in midterm elections. The most obvious is enthusiasm. In this cycle, that’s more important than ever. These people are crazy, insane in their hysterical hatred of Donald Trump. But there’s another factor at play – the elite is under assault by Donald Trump in a way it’s never experienced before. Oh, we’ve had Republicans talk a good game about cutting budgets and changing things in the past, but Trump‘s actually doing it, and his attack on the status quo was always going to draw a backlash. Our failed elite isn’t just going to give up its elite status because Trump has asked politely.
If you’re as old as I am, and I watched “Miami Vice” in its first run, you’ve been hearing about the trade deficit for 40+ years. Nobody’s ever done anything about it. Trump intends to, wisely early enough in the election cycle so that the massive disruptions to my and other people’s net worth can settle down long before the voting begins. He’s also unleashed Elon on the NGO/funding scam to starve the activist class of access to our money and, therefore, foil its ability to make our lives miserable. Donald Trump is an existential threat to the ruling class as it currently exists, and you know by how seriously they take him. They’ve tried to bankrupt him. They’ve tried to put him in jail. They’ve tried to kill him. You can be sure that every one of them and their minions is going to come out to vote against Trump and anybody associated with him. Oh, and their coterie of pet billionaires is going to devote as much money as they need to get it done. They’ve got about a dozen of them, and we’ve only got one.
So, the problem is motivating the new Trump coalition into going out there and casting ballots for Republicans who aren’t Trump when Trump isn’t on the ballot. By building a coalition of a lot of working-class people who don’t always vote, we’ve given up a lot of our high-propensity voters; the Democrats have inherited the formally nominally-Republican SSRI-gobbling, Chardonnay-swilling wine women who have nothing better to do but to go vote for anybody willing to kill babies and castrate little boys so their Munchhausen mommies can feel special.
So, how do we get our voters who love Trump and hate the rest of the Republicans out there to vote for the rest of the Republicans? First, Trump has got to motivate them. He’s got to do what he only does to get them excited again. Now, of course, deploying Donald Trump comes with a problem. While the sight of Donald Trump may excite normal patriots, it also drives scumbag progressives into a fury. Still, he’s got to make it clear that a vote for whatever Republican is on the ballot is a vote for Donald Trump. Unless it’s Thomas Massie; we’re all tired of that guy.
The second thing that needs to happen to correct the perception that other Republicans suck is for other Republicans to stop sucking. It doesn’t help our case when one of our politicians acts like a complete tool. Sadly, we’ve got a whole toolbox of tools. Now, they’ve done a little better lately on getting together and rowing in the same direction, but there’s always some Republican backbencher who has got this or that pet peeve that he, she, or they chose to prioritize above getting it done for the Party. We need to have a party. And we need to invite the normal people to the Party so they feel invested in it. That means sometimes taking one for the team. That means resisting the urge to run down the administration in return for a one-shot positive write-up in the Washington Post.
Obviously, we need results if we want to win. If the economy is terrible in November 2026, forget it. If the tariff gamble flops, we are toast. We’ll lose the House, and we may well lose the Senate. The economy is the big play. It’s everything. Unless we get into a giant continuing meat-grinder war, this is going to be a pocketbook election. Fortunately, Donald Trump understands that and is focused on making the economy great again. Will his tariffs and other actions make it happen? I don’t know for sure, but I do know two things. The first is that Donald Trump is convinced his policies will be successful, and success for him is literally life and death. The second is that a bunch of people who have been wrong about literally everything pertaining to the economy, foreign policy, and our society for the last 30 years are convinced his policies will fail. Based purely on track records, I’m optimistic
But there’s still work to be done. It starts with the reconciliation process. The Senate must stop its senatorial onanism and pass the budget resolution the House managed to squeeze through by one or so votes. Get the tax cuts done, get the immigration money allocated, get the military rebuilt. Get it done. Stop dithering. Do it now. This is an easy win – only someone as dumb as a senator could screw it up.
Then, there is the actual vote-getting part. Trump’s election executive orders may help, but the real work will involve the Party and outside organizations. The Republican Party did very well in 2024 by chasing ballots. They started well in advance, thought through the plan, and utilized the facts on the ground and the laws that applied – like mail-in voting and ballot harvesting – to win the fight on the battlefield as the battlefield existed. We need to do that again.
But we’ve got to start right now. Scott Pressler is great, but vectoring him in a month before the election will not get it done, folks. We are 19 months from E-Day, and yesterday was the best day to start going out and getting absentee ballot requests filled out for our low-propensity voters. Today is the second-best day.
Once again, we need to ask: What’s the plan? Who’s in charge? Where’s the money coming from? Those questions need to be asked right now, and they need answers. Maybe there are answers. We just need to hear them. This is not an attack on the RNC, which did great work after Ronna McDaniel was finally booted into well-deserved oblivion. Explaining what’s happening to the voters and the donors is critical because a solid plan demonstrates competence and inspires confidence. This inspires volunteers and the people writing checks.
Now, it’s going to be hard. No one has yet cracked the code on how to get our new coalition to turn out for Donald Trump when Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot. We need to figure that out. We need to figure it out pretty damn quick. April 1st was not a total disaster – in fact, it was the most likely result of all the possible results. That Wisconsin Supreme Court defeat was by the same margin as the Wisconsin Supreme Court defeat in 2023. We’re not facing an unprecedented mass rejection of Donald Trump, as the regime media would have you believe, though that’s what will happen if the economy goes south. We are facing the normal problems of an in-party in a midterm election with the added variables that are the advantages and disadvantages associated with Donald Trump.
We America First patriots can get this done. We’ve just got to do it. And we’ve got to start today since we couldn't start yesterday.
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