One word: candidates. Good candidates—which we will talk about more next week—expand the terrain, even under the worst conditions. Bad candidates lose winnable elections. A bad candidate can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
And this is what we see here in 2022. The Republican field in 2022 is so poor that Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (chief architect of all things GOP in DC) is already making excuses, citing candidate quality for an expected poor showing in the Senate. Specifically, Republican candidates in AZ, GA, OH, PA, and NH are polling below expectations and posting frankly pathetic fundraising numbers. The GOP is even pulling money out of some of these races at a crucial time.
So how did we get here? How is it possible the GOP candidates are so bad that we've gone from "Red Wave" to "Dems are likely to hold the Senate?" Let's distill it down to 3 key elements.
1) The Trump kiss… of death.
Donald Trump is the party’s standard bearer; what he says, goes. While Trump’s hold over the party’s core voters is weaker than it once was, it's still the dominant force in the GOP. In US elections, to become "the candidate," you must survive a primary election (i.e., a fight among multiple candidates from the same party). Voting is not compulsory here (Hi, Belgium!1), and in these primary elections, the people who show up tend to be the hard core supporters—the "party faithful." The “Big Lie” (that Biden stole the 2020 election) is an unshakeable truth for 7 in 10 Republicans. Thus, the modern GOP primary race is often a race for Trump's endorsement. Who can be the "Trumpiest" candidate?
In their effort to out-Trump each other, some candidates find themselves in too deep. Not only are they bought-in to the Trump lore, they have gone so far as to mimic Trump. They have adopted his talking points, his style, even his hand gestures and predilection for giving his opponents juvenile nicknames.
To be sure, their Trump-aligned positions can hurt them in the general election, when it is not simply about catering to the base. But Republican betrothal to Trump isn’t why these Republican candidates are so bad. In their desperate attempts to bottle the Trump magic, it has tipped over into Trump cosplay. And this violates one of the fundamental rules of good candidates—don't be something you're not.
2) Voters (usually) see through inauthenticity.
Good candidates are a lot of things, but above all, they are authentic. Authenticity builds trust. By showing "who you really are," the authentic candidate answers questions before they are asked. Authenticity forges connections and closes gaps. Voters are much more likely to buy into the messages, promises, and (critically) motivations of candidates they feel they can trust.
Inauthenticity breeds skepticism. Trump mimicry (and any other form of insincerity) can backfire for a candidate when it comes across as inauthentic.
Several GOP candidates suffer from this inauthenticity of Trump mimicry. Two in particular (J.D. Vance in OH and Dr. Mehmet Oz in PA) have taken what should be slam dunk wins for the GOP during a Red Wave and turned them into possible—or even likely—Dem wins.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is running for the open seat in Pennsylvania, made his fortune selling “miracle cures” on television. But (inauthenticity #1), he doesn’t even live in the state he purportedly wants to serve, instead residing in a New Jersey mansion overlooking the Manhattan skyline. Dr. Oz’s attempts at being a man of the people have been laughable. One viral event involved him going to a grocery store to talk about rising prices, but (inauthenticity #2) mostly just revealed it has probably been years since he last prepared his own food. Another similar event has Oz visiting a tourist-trap cheesesteak spot in Philadelphia and (inauthenticity #3) passing it off as if it is something locals do. (They do not.)
For his part, J.D. Vance literally wrote the book on what upper crust Americans don’t get about the white working class, but he can’t shed that at his core he’s a venture capitalist with an Ivy League law degree. While his gaffes haven't been as comical as Oz's, Vance has proven an inauthentic candidate, putting this race in reach for Dems. Voters are left to ask themselves, if he's lying about himself, what else is he lying about?
Oz, Vance, and others, took the easy route through a primary by pretending to be Trump. They hope simply to soak up his voters. In so doing, they sacrificed any chance at authenticity. This is now costing them dearly with the broader electorate. That doesn’t mean this is a done deal for Democrats. Hardly. The GOP can still win these races by adhering to one of the fundamental rules of good campaigns—message discipline matters.
3) Good campaigns live in the message box.
If authenticity is the most important trait for a candidate, message discipline is the most important trait for a campaign.
Karl Marx once wrote, "Men make their own history… but they do not make it under self-selected circumstances." The circumstances of today are all about the economy. We are in an economic moment, and a campaign that can connect with voters—with their anxieties, their fears, their aspirations—on the economy is at a distinct advantage.
Put another way, Republican strategists know if they can make the election about the economy, they win. If Oz, Vance, and the rest of the crew spend the next 7 weeks hyper-focused on the high cost of living and inflation, they have a good shot at overcoming their authenticity problems.
Why? The economy is a ‘Republican’ advantage issue. We will talk more about this in a few weeks. For now, suffice it to say, Republicans regularly beat Democrats on ‘handling the economy’ by double digits. ‘Good on the economy’ is part of the Republican party’s brand, rightly or wrongly. This element of the GOP brand is so strong, and cost of living is so prominent in voters’ minds, that this GOP advantage may yet outweigh their poor candidate quality.
To oversimplify (but only slightly), all Republicans really need to do is focus this cycle on who will make people's lives better. 'Are you better off now, after 2 years of Biden, than you were 4 years ago under Trump?' The question is disingenuous—but the truth doesn't matter so much as the perception.
That's the message Republicans need, and if they can exercise message discipline, even their terrible candidates have a shot. Message discipline doesn’t require complexity, it requires commitment. It means having a message box the campaign uses (internally) to articulate its narrative. It means ensuring all facets of the campaign (social media, paid ads, candidate speeches, etc.) all read from the same narrative. It means having talking points that pivot every story back to this message box. It means practicing this skill of pivoting back on message.
In other words, it means being a traditional politician.
GOP voters supported these Trump acolytes during the primary elections precisely because they cosplayed Trump's "non-traditional politician" schtick. But with 7 weeks to go, in order to win they will need to run exactly as a traditional politician would.
The irony is rich. Just like Dr. Oz.
Next week we will take a deep dive into high quality Democratic candidates2, and why Democrats are forced to rely on strong candidates.
…and Australia, and Peru, and about 20 other countries. We see you!
Yes, we're biased. Of course there are good GOP examples and terrible Dem examples. But we're playing favorites in this election.