What if he doesn’t sink the party?

Now, I realize that neither Ossoff nor Handel mentioned the president much during the race — which, in itself, bolsters the theory that Trump might not be as consequential in these races as Dems hope. But the race was nationalized. Its implications were national. The coverage was national. The parties treated the race as one that would have national implications. Certainly, the money that poured into the race was national. One imagines that every Georgian Republican who went to the polls understood what this race meant for the future of the parties. When you nationalize races, Republicans will take more than the president into account.

We already know that an electorate can be happy with a president and dislike his party. Why can’t the reverse be true? Barack Obama, for example, carried healthy approval ratings for the majority of his presidency, yet voters decimated his party over six years. What if there’s a faction of Republican voters who don’t like Trump but still don’t like Obama’s policies?

What a concept. I find Trump detestable in many ways, and I’m not a big fan of Republicans, but know what’s worse than either? Democrats.

Oh, and you know about this brilliant electoral strategy of telling voters that they aren’t voting for you because they’re cruel and bigoted?

Herein lies the Democrats’ problem, just as it was a problem when Hillary Clinton bellowed about a basket full of deplorables during the 2016 campaign. The Democrats and their base (Hollywood) think the key to winning elections is to insult voters. “They don’t vote for us because they are bigots” is not a strategy I would employ as a campaign manager but they are welcome to keep trying this, and they are welcome to keep losing.

Another problem with Filipovic’s theory: Trump won educated white women over the first major party female nominee in history. ”

The otherization and dehumanization of large swaths of the voting public is a primary reason operatives like Filipovic have been reduced to tweeting from the havens of their Upper West and East Coast cities. These urban islands are where the party is forced to mine for talent to send into strange flyover districts. As Heat Street reported, Ossoff had nine times as many donors in California, as his home state of Georgia.

The key to winning, according to Filipovic, is to act contemptibly toward voters and put up candidates in districts where they don’t live, while simultaneously marching through their streets and blocking highways. Bold strategy.

Please keep that up.

Oh, and then there’s this:

The problem with Pfieffer’s direction are two-fold. While there are Republican voters disenchanted with Trump, they may not be disenchanted enough to close their eyes and pull the lever for Democrats. That’s an awfully big gamble for a party that just threw $30 million down the toilet.

This is a reinforcement of Harsanyi’s thesis above. The dynamic of the election, in which people like me hated that Trump was the nominee, but are sure as hell not going to vote for a Democrat in general, let alone Hillary Clinton, continues to play out.

[Update a while later]

Heh. “The only thing Democrats won recently was the congressional baseball game, while the only way Democrat voters can seem to get Republicans out of Congress is by shooting them. And they can’t even do that right.”

[Thursday-morning update]

Some people hate Trump; more people hate liberalsleftists [correction mine].

…was “radicalized” by the MSM.

Yup. Also, want more Trump? Just keep it up, because this is how that happens.

[Update a few minutes later]

Trump didn’t ruin the media; Obama did.

Yup again.

[Update a few more minutes later]

“Unhinged Rhetoric About ‘Nazis’ and Trump Derangement Syndrome Lead to Bloodshed.”