Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 11/06/2026 2:08:50 PM PST by lightman
“The main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.”
That was Vice President JD Vance’s diagnosis of why Republicans lost so soundly in the midterm elections. And the data supports it. Nearly every demographic swung heavily toward Democrats, including groups central to Trump’s coalition: young men, working-class voters, and voters in rural counties. The coalition that carried Republicans to victory just two years ago had turned sharply against them.
But what explains that shift? According to Caroline Downey at National Review, the answer is horseshoe theory, and the volatility of populism.
Trump has run successfully on populism, and conservatives have increasingly embraced it as their driving political force over that of principle. But populism is a fickle beast. An electorate united more by grievances than by shared principles can shift dramatically, moving between political camps that promise to address the same frustrations. Downey argues that Tuesday was a manifestation of that volatility, this time working against Republicans.
"The price of populism is that it's volatile. It can work extremely well, or it can come back to bite, because it's emotional. It's often fueled by resentment," Downey explained. "In his post-midterm statement, J.D. Vance said that Trump voters turned out, but they flipped for Democrats in a lot of cases. The resentments were at a deep level, very similar, and they manifest at the voting booth."
What are those resentments? On both the populist left and the populist right, affordability dominates the political debate, alongside distrust of the wealthy, elites, big business, and “experts.” Many of those frustrations are justified. But shared frustrations do not amount to shared principles, and they do not guarantee loyalty to either party.
That is where the overlap becomes revealing. Suspicion of powerful institutions can slide into conspiratorial thinking, as the debate over the Epstein files has shown. On economics, some on the right denounce socialism while accusing oil companies of capitalist exploitation.
Principles may have taken a back seat with Trump’s election in 2016, but that lack of grounding leaves the electorate vulnerable to massive, emotionally driven shifts. Resentment can propel the right to victory, but it can just as easily send those same voters to the left.
Without shared principles to hold a coalition together, its loyalty can last only as long as its anger is directed at the right people.
Downey went on to argue that corruption is "poison" to populist leaders precisely because their movements are built on opposition to elite corruption. When those leaders break their promises or appear to embrace the behavior they campaigned against, they risk turning their supporters’ resentment against themselves.
"There's one thing that's poison to populism, corruption," she explained. "Every populist movement in history has been explicitly opposed to it. If you want to spark a populist revolt, try breaking promises, try throwing off a whiff of corruption, and throw in a foreign war that you haven't exactly made the case for."
This comes as conservatives search for something to blame for Tuesday’s defeat, with many settling on the Iran war. While it was certainly a contributing factor, many commentators have been quick to overlook its economic effects and blame the decision to wage war itself. In doing so, they preserve the populist argument by placing the blame on the neoconservatism of the past rather than examining the movement’s own failures.
That has yet to produce a reckoning with economic policies such as tariffs, which have featured prominently in voter discontent across exit polls, or with allegations of corruption and the rollout of immigration enforcement operations.
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Democrats registered 20 million “new voters” with no proof of citizenship in the past two years to rig midterms
The GOP establishment swamp let them do it in a massive quid-pro-quo
https://tierneyrealnewsnetwork.substack.com/p/democrats-registered-20-million-new
Yeah, al-America is a turd world craphole with rigged elections.
Glad I’m out-a-here in a few years. The kids and the grandkids will have to shoot their way out after the Democommies seize the guns and the property.
Sure seems like we’re dealing with a “new voter” problem, doesn’t it?
The dems learned how to rig the electronic ballots during bidens primaries. He went from a loser to big time winner. We need hackers to find out who is rigging the electronic voting machines. Too obvious.
BS.
Trump voters voted red.
19 million new registrations voted blue.
Hmmm, 19 or 20 million new Democrat voters, how could that have posibbly happened.
There's no proof of that.
Any Republican that voted for Demonic Party filth is either: 1) So stupid he/she should be charged for their oxygen, 2) Are ignoramouses that have not been paying attention to their increasingly violence and threats, and 3) Couldn’t give a flying hang about what happens to the country any longer, or 4) All of the above.
Well that’s a nightmare. I assumed MAGA stayed home, it’s worse than that, they voted democrat. I figured people were pissed but damn.
Of course the estabishment let them do it - that’s how they keep the grift going.
Inappropriate comment.
Prove the elections are valid.
One large group, the core of conservatism in America, didn’t change, they gave their usual 82% vote against the democrat left.
Deport 3 million illegals
Layoff 400k federal employees
Each one of those people have family and friends who will now do anything to punish Trump
Add it up and Republicans lose
There was a documentary (maybe HBO) in 2014-15 (prior to Trump) where they said the voting machines and ballot scanners can be manipulated and democrats were in the documentary complaining about it.
How could the polls be so right? Guess who was in denial.
Hey Brother.
Hang in there. We need you here.
Yes...GOP didn’t turn out. But also no way democrats turned out like a presidential election.
The more I look into this...the more I realize we don’t have elections any longer. We are worse than Brazil.
Dominion voting systems. Dominion means domination, and what a coincidence, it starts with the same letter as democrat.
I vote at a church in the middle of what most people would call nowhere. There are six women sitting there checking me in to vote, and where I live I do have to show picture ID and sign the register. But then after I vote, I have to feed my ballot into a machine. How do I know what that machine is doing with my vote?
I want to see my vote counted by hand, in my presence, and the vote tallied on a board in public view to only those who have already voted, with bipartisan witnesses.
Electronics have no place in voting. Who knows who and what that machine is communicating with? There may be no visible ethernet cable connecting it to the communists, but we have Bluetooth and Wifi these days.
Show me the actual numbers, not chart of "differences".
My spidey senses tell me there are demonicRAT precincts that experienced over 100% turnout.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.