Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.
Voters across the country resoundingly rejected President Donald Trump and the Republican Party this week, making it clear that Americans have had enough of his extremist agenda less than a year into his second term.
Democrats didn’t just win in safe areas like New York City, but they also won big in swing states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia at the top of the ticket and in local elections.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who won Virginia’s gubernatorial race on Nov. 4.
The results raise the question: Why are Trump and the GOP so out of touch with the American people?
In these races, the right resorted to their same old tactics. Republican candidates tried hard in states like Virginia to use attacks on transgender people as a rallying cry, much like the Trump campaign did in 2024. They also dusted off ancient attacks on figures like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—who they called communists—to use against candidates like New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Of course, the attack against Mamdani, who was a baby when Clinton was first elected president, did not work.
Republicans assumed that these attacks that worked for them in the past would work again in 2025. It was a disaster.
The GOP has kept itself in an ideological bubble, convincing itself that the United States is still dominated by rural, white, conservative politics. The right attacks U.S. cities and the suburbs surrounding them, preferring outdated demagoguery about crime and immigration while ignoring the real issues.
But people care about issues like the cost of living, health care, and the safety of families, while Republicans have spent the last year increasing costs, attacking health care, and terrorizing families.
A cartoon by David Horsey.
Right-wing indifference and neglect created a backlash, mobilizing new and existing voters. In California, for instance, the GOP’s illegal gerrymandering led to a lightning-quick campaign to change that state’s own districts. Voters turned out in droves to support an initiative that was the only issue on the ballot for most voters.
Traditionally, Republicans rely on low voter turnout among the Democratic base to win. Combined with their slate of bigoted attacks and false allegations of communism and socialism, this is supposed to work for the right.
But Republicans’ failure to reach Americans who don’t safely fit in the party’s core demographics—young voters, people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ voters—keeps them in the dark. In years like this, when the right’s abuses touch so many areas of American life, they were not prepared for the uprising that occurred.
The day after the election, Fox News portrayed the sea change as “the end of the world” because the network and the people who watch it—especially Trump—are out of touch.
If you don’t understand real Americans, you’re going to have a hard time winning their votes.
