“I hope the Republicans can encourage voter turnout for the midterms.”
Both sides have dedicated voters who will reliably turn out for non-presidential year votes. But it’s the middle who often decide presidential votes and those people are only peripherally looking at politics. They have kids and jobs and other concerns that conflict with voting which is somewhere between a trip back to Publix because you forgot something you don’t immediately need and a routine dental cleaning in importance. It’s really hard to get them to turn out.
As for fully turning out the Republican base, how many people have you heard say, “If he doesn’t meet my every requirement I’ll protest by staying home?” Those people, with their unrealistic purity test, don’t understand the larger picture. Politics is rarely a win/lose. It’s an ongoing negotiation and you want your side to have as many seats at the table as possible.
And now all politics is national. People move around so much now, they don’t feel ties to where they live. They probably don’t even interact with their neighbors, just people online.
So they don’t care who is on the local school board, or city commission. But do you know who does care? The Democrats, it’s part of their national strategy to flood school boards and local city councils, with people who don’t care about the locals, but about the national goals of the DNC, which is, revolution!