In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal says:

Since his unlikely victory in 2016 against the widely disliked Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump has a perfect record of electoral defeat. The GOP was pounded in the 2018 midterms owing to his low approval rating. Mr. Trump himself lost in 2020. He then sabotaged Georgia’s 2021 runoffs by blaming party leaders for not somehow overturning his defeat. That gave Democrats control of the Senate, letting President Biden pump up inflation with a $1.9 trillion Covid bill, appoint a liberal Supreme Court Justice, and pass a $700 billion climate spending hash.

Now Mr. Trump has botched the 2022 elections, and it could hand Democrats the Senate for two more years. [Continue reading…]

Conservative columnist, John Podhoretz, writes:

In almost every place a Trumpster lost, there had been a regular Republican who could and should have been the party’s nominee — a nominee who could have taken advantage of the uniquely horrible facts and fundamentals confronting Democratic candidates in 2022.

But then Toxic Trump came into these races, picking the candidate who bowed lowest — or, as in Pennsylvania, went for a snake-oil doctor salesman because, it seems, his wife enjoyed watching Mehmet Oz carny-bark on afternoon TV.

And the independent voters’ history tells us would ordinarily have flocked to the GOP and said, “Oh, man, what is that stink?”

In the past four midterms, indies chose the party that did not hold the White House by double-digit margins. In 2018, with Trump as president, the Independent vote was 12 points in the Democrats’ favor. In 2006, with George W. Bush in the Oval Office, the number was 18 points. When Obama was president in 2010 and 2014, Indies went 16 and 12 points in the Republican direction respectively.

This week, Independents went 49-48 for the Democrats. One point — in the other direction.

Independents made the difference then and they made the difference on Tuesday. They didn’t want to keep hearing about voter fraud that didn’t exist, or about how the world had done wrong to a multi-billionaire boo-hoo whiner who lost his reelection bid due to his own incompetence. [Continue reading…]

“A true leader understands when they have become a liability. A true leader understands that it’s time to step off the stage, and the voters have given us that very clear message… I could not support him.”

—VA Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears (R) comes out against Trump’s 2024 candidacy pic.twitter.com/0g1plfHJmu

— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022