Donald trrump

So now it's time to figure out who to blame. The post-election spin from the world of Mitch McConnell is that the GOP's failure to flip the Senate is on Donald Trump and National Republican Senatorial Committee head Rick Scott, and that candidate selection and expenditures are the reason that we don't have a Republican majority in the upper house. For anyone who paid attention, this doesn't pass the smell test. In the wake of a number of fractious primaries, GOP Senate candidates essentially went dark in the summer, their ad budgets expended and without the resources to get back on the air. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer and the DSCC defined the Republican outsiders for a new audience of general election voters.

In every election, there are the winners and losers, but there are also winners and losers away from the ballot box, which oftentimes are more important and have a longer tail than the vote-getters. In the 2022 midterms, here are the winners and losers as I see them. Loser: Donald Trump Well, this one is obvious. The former president weighed in with all his political energy behind multiple candidates in this cycle, particularly in divisive primaries and statewide races where he often chose outsiders over more experienced candidates. The Trump fatigue factor was clearly a problem this time around, with his choices in some races utterly rejected by voters.

Donald Trump did not emerge from the wonkish world of conservative politics and policy. He was a product of the national media and international entertainment industry, and he brought that unique swagger to the White House in 2016, after several years of flirting with the idea in interviews. He honed his image of a savvy know-it-all billionaire businessman on NBC’s The Apprentice. The show was number one in the network television ratings for several years, as Trump plucked C- and D-list celebrities to compete for his affections. But the success of the over-the-top WWE showman persona that put Trump in the White House has not rubbed off on the political candidates whom he's selected over the course of the last three elections — 2018, 2020 and now 2022.

How wrong can you be? About as wrong as I was about the character of the midterm elections. I thought there would be a red wave, fueled in part by high-octane orange fuel. Clearly I was wrong. It is no consolation to know that I was hardly alone in my assumptions. Nor is it much consolation to hear from Donald Trump that it was a “GREAT EVENING” because there were “174 wins and nine losses.” I didn’t check his math, but even if accurate it is obvious that there was no red wave. Several of his high-profile candidates lost, most conspicuously Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. The fact that he lost to a man who is ostentatiously a mental incompetent added insult to injury.