Since Tuesday’s drubbing, I have heard any number of luminaries blame the loss on the “war” in Iran, gas prices, or candidate quality. It makes my eyes roll so far back in my head that they start to roll down my neck. It comes down to messaging and production, something Donald Trump has always excelled at but fell completely short on this cycle. So did Republican leadership and the RNC.

Don’t talk to me about gas prices. The average gas price on Election Day 2026 was $4.18. On Election Day 2022, it was $4.10. After 9.1% inflation in June, a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan on September 11, and an open border, Joe Biden and the Democrats gained a Senate seat and lost only six House seats. Democrats effectively used fear about further abortion restrictions to turn out their voters and put abortion measures on the ballot in several red states because they know how and what to message.

Spare me on candidate quality. Amy Acton, the governor-elect in Ohio, was slurring her words and staggering during two campaign events leading up to the election, and a 2019 police report had her admitting to taking an unknown amount of prescription medication. Previously, she was the wildly unpopular COVID lockdown lady.

Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Georgia governor race after a disastrous tenure as mayor of Atlanta, a job she quit after one term. The city burned bright in the summer of 2020 under her “leadership.” Then she openly admitted her internal polls showed she wouldn’t have kept her office without facing a runoff election.

A few more, you say? In North Carolina, Democrat LaKesha Womack won an upset victory over GOP Rep. Tim Moore in House District 14. The Tuesday after Election Day, she is due to appear in court on a felony car theft charge. According to the New York Post, she was served at a campaign event. A 19-year-old Arizona State University student won the position of Maricopa County Superior Court clerk and will be running one of the largest courts in the country.

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Oh, then there’s the “war.” I do not understand how you can call a bombing campaign that lasted about a month, followed by eight months of senseless negotiations sprinkled with a few skirmishes, a “war.” No one called it that when Trump wiped out ISIS in his first term. Or when Obama bombed Libya for seven months. Or Clinton’s four-month campaign in Yugoslavia at the behest of NATO. Yet somehow no one in the administration could put that story together.

Which leads me straight into messaging and production, two things Donald Trump excels at. He revolutionized the campaign rally in 2016 and started to run them like a rock star would, giving the crowd the mic. Here he is with his signature policies: immigration and border control, boiled down to three words the crowd knows by heart.

Look who stole that thunder in 2026. Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, the Muslim Brotherhood-loving, Jew-hating senator-elect from Michiganistan, stealing Trump's schtick. He did this at rallies all over the state and in his victory speech. 

Republicans put forth no effort to boil down the accomplishments of the first two years of President Trump’s term into concise sound bites for candidates to use. The best chance for a great production-value event, the midterm convention, was held in the two days leading up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11. It felt morose and should have been held in July.

Even Trump’s rallies seemed like a shadow of their former brilliance. No lively exchanges with the crowd shooting back consistent messages. No easy three-word phrases to boil down complex policy. “Build the Wall” encompassed strong border and immigration policy. “Drain the Swamp” cemented Trump’s status as an outsider not beholden to Washington interests. The phrase was repurposed as “Swamp the Vote” in 2024 to ensure people got to the polls and remembered who their champion was.

And where were the meme lords in 2026? They seem to have petered out after the sombrero gag. Even in 2024, the president was eminently aware of meme culture. It is why he worked a drive-thru window at McDonald’s and climbed into a garbage truck, both times in his suit and red tie. Memeable moments and ideas were nowhere to be found in the days and weeks leading up to November 3.

The only candidates this cycle who had their messaging game in order were Spencer Pratt and Steve Hilton. They both ran in California against a well-oiled machine and impossible odds. Yet they captured the imagination of meme lords and voters nationwide. At one point, it seemed online creators were making more videos for Pratt than the campaign was. In fact, the Batman ad was the most-viewed Pratt content, and it did not come from the campaign. But it highlighted Pratt’s consistent messages: corruption and elitism.

I lowercased “midterm convention” in this version. If it is an official title, tell me and I’ll restore the capitals.

Hilton also used AI-generated content from online sources. In fact, some of the content was so good that the California media started complaining about it and questioning whether it complied with state law. Hilton's most-viewed ad was also his most controversial. The GOP hated it, but he wasn't talking to them. 

The 2028 election will be a watershed moment. If Democrats hold all three branches, they will have the power to break the system as we know it. Whether it is adding Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., as states, proposing an amendment to change the Senate or the Electoral College, changing how the Supreme Court is structured, or making ballot harvesting and other sketchy election practices the norm nationwide, any combination will fundamentally change our governing institutions.

Someone has to tell compelling stories about how disastrous these ideas are. Creative people will have to boil these ideas down to sound bites that do the job of “Drain the Swamp.” Big ideas compressed into short phrases. And someone is going to have to bring production value back.

I nominate Spencer Pratt and Steve Hilton. Even though they did not win their races, they captured the imagination of voters far beyond Los Angeles and California with common-sense ideas and compelling content. The Republicans clearly need more of both and would be missing a huge opportunity by not engaging these two men.