With each passing day, poll after poll points to an election blue wave washing over Republicans on Nov. 3.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, has gone so far as to tell MS NOW's "The Beat" that it is "almost statistically impossible" for his party to hold the House.
It may not be a tsunami, but Decision Desk HQ now gives Democrats a 76% chance
of taking the House, and the Senate is a coin flip. If that's how it plays out, how should the GOP respond?First, take a deep breath and acknowledge that millions of Americans are struggling. The party's new platform could be boiled down to: "More empathy, less finger-pointing and fewer insults."
Political pendulum keeps swinging
The political pendulum never stops swinging. Which policies can Republicans enact to push it back the other way?
Not so long ago, Democrats were seen as the champions of the working class and the disenfranchised. Then the party became a servant to unions, special interests, Big Tech and every woke initiative on offer.
As they did, Republicans – long branded, often by partisans, as "the party of the rich" – sensed an opening and turned to the bread-and-butter issues hitting the working class and the disenfranchised hardest. Suddenly, millions of Americans saw the GOP as "the party of the people."
Now the pendulum has swung again. Issue by issue, Democratic lawmakers are reclaiming the title they held for decades. Most alarming for GOP leaders, they're doing it even in red states and districts.
Republicans can scream all they want that Democrats are communists who will destroy our national security. But as GOP leaders have always known, perception usually decides close elections.
Perception, and the reality that paycheck-to-paycheck Americans are watching those paychecks shrink. Nowhere more so than at the gas pump, where prices are up 27% from a year ago, and in the grocery store.
So if Republicans get waxed on Nov. 3, what's their fallback strategy? First, they must admit their mistakes. Then they must get back to basics, starting with this one: National elections are often won or lost not by big margins but by slivers of 1% of the vote in a handful of districts, counties and states.
When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a record 137.5 million votes were cast. Yet his victory came down to 77,744 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Had fewer than 40,000 of those voters switched sides, Hillary Clinton would have been president.
The same was true in 2020. Joe Biden won the presidential election in which nearly 158.4 million ballots were cast, yet his victory came down to 42,918 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin. Had fewer than 22,000 of those voters switched sides, the Electoral College would have deadlocked and thrown the race to the House, where Trump would likely have prevailed.
That same math may well decide 2028.
Losing the slivers
The GOP's dilemma heading into 2028 is twofold. First, many serious Republicans I talk to believe the party is losing those slivers of 1% on the economy, accountability, the war in Iran and a general tone-deafness to the struggles of working-class Americans.
The second goes back to perception. Like it or not, Democrats will most likely settle on a ticket that strikes tens of millions of voters as the adults in the room, whether it's Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or some other pairing.
Beshear, for his part, has a new book on The New York Times bestseller list. Almost any political operative will read that as a sure sign the governor is about to jump into the 2028 presidential race. And rather than mock him, those tone-deaf Republicans would serve themselves and their party far better by trying to understand why Beshear's connecting with voters.
I believe Republicans will enter 2028 as the underdog. That said, I also believe that Vice President JD Vance is an exceptional candidate, one who connects with the working class because he comes from it. But simply coming from that world won't be enough. If Republicans lose badly on Nov. 3, it will be on Vance to take on each of those issues and say plainly where he thinks the administration has fallen short.
Americans know Republicans control the White House and Congress. Don't pretend otherwise. Voters will tolerate some finger-pointing at the Biden administration and obstructionist Democrats for the nation's ills. But most now blame this administration for the economy, and they want accountability.
A drubbing on Nov. 3 would be a crisis for the party. It would also be a real opportunity for Vance to step out of Trump's shadow and lay out his own vision for the country, one rooted in a life story that speaks to nearly every at-risk community in America.
Counterintuitive as it sounds, a blue wave on Nov. 3 could be the GOP's silver lining for 2028. The pendulum never stops swinging.
Douglas MacKinnon, a former White House and Pentagon official, is author of "The 56: Liberty Lessons From Those Who Risked All to Sign the Declaration of Independence."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: If Republicans get crushed in the midterms, what's their plan B? | Opinion
