The Art of the Comeback, Indeed

Everyone knows that Donald Trump wrote The Art of the Deal, so much so, in fact, that it was a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign.
But less people know about his co-authorship of The Art of the Comeback.

And ironically, it seems a lot less people saw Tuesday night’s results as possible.

At this point, we’d say the GOP is completely transformed. The campaign sought every aspect of a fusion ticket, by bringing in classical Democrats like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., progressives like Tulsi Gabbard, and a host of other surrogates. The election results only confirmed this, but in terms of the rank-and-file electorate. Trump massively outperformed among minority and young voters, taking a dagger to the Democrats’ gradually-constructed coalition that appears to have come tumbling down in one night.

But Democrats do have a chance for redemption, but only if the GOP stalls like they did in 2017. When Trump won, the GOP also held the House and Senate, but could not accomplish key tasks and some in the party still resisted the tone of their new standard bearer.

The GOP was given a historic mandate, one that even included Trump winning the popular vote – which now takes away any ammunition about the “legitimacy” of his election – and now, they must keep it. They must deliver on their promises, some of which are gargantuan, to keep even a sliver of the new voters they just won over.

If the GOP does take up this mandate and deliver well, then the Democratic Party loses their chance for redemption and now must start from scratch. The old guard isn’t inspirational, progressive policy isn’t working, and simply “ad-hominem-ing” your opponent to death clearly isn’t a sound strategy. The Democrats must take a good, long look at what went wrong on Tuesday and get back to the American public with better answers.