those very issues, democrats talk about democracy. abortion in a lot of states was on the was the top issue for democrats. but republicans failed to articulate a message of how they were going to fix the economy, what they were going to do to help people. they taubed about the issues. they talked about the right issues. but they failed to talk about or produce a plan that was going to make tomorrow better for americans, give them a vision of something positive that they can look forward to that was worth voting at the booth for republicans. this was completely winnable. it should have been winnable. both houses should have been winnable for republicans. all right, maria, really quickly. 2024, in your opinion, would democrats rather run against former president trump or florida governor ron desantis?
to in the lead up were saying they were squarely focused on abortion, it was motivating democrats. and they also brought up democracy a lot and their fear about all these election lies that was a common theme as mark mentioned across states. it wasn t just in arizona. there were election deniers up and down the ballot in michigan. there were some in pennsylvania, and across the board they appear to have lost. i don t think that means, though, that election lies are going to go away at all because we see that the former president is continuing to spread those lies. it does speak to candidate quality, right? it s one of the reasons these people couldn t go the distance. and in some cases you had national republicans pool their money, but in other cases they were all in just to grow their numbers. i will say one more thing about kevin mccarthy. he did bring this on himself. when you have the fringe members of the conference doing things out of the norm to say the least at the last confe
trouble adjusting to change. so, again, if the person that you re talking about only has this very small playbook with a very few good but limited plays, he may not have the capacity to adjust to a new environment. i think that he s also already maneuvering to blame other people for what happened to his candidates in the mid-terms. there s a lot of talk coming out of his camp about how the republican party, the national party, didn t support his candidates the way they should. the other side can push back and sa say, listen, we put $30 million into dr. oz, one of your celebrities. and it turned out he didn t win. and most of the other trump candidates, most of them failed as well. you re correct.
and it s still a battle. it s going to continue for the next two years. i would just say we re two years out from the next election, and we re just trying to the dust is settling from this one. i think it would be a mistake. as i mentioned, trump s cost us the last three elections. and i don t want to see it happen a fourth time. so, how worried should republicans be about this special announcement on tuesday? i think a lot of rational republicans agree with governor hogan and wall street journal as well in their opinion piece this week said that ever since donald trump won, he has a perfect record of electoral defeat. and what many are looking at, conservatives, common sense conservatives, look at this election. the candidates that focused on immigration and crime and issues that are important to the american people, they fared well. those that were more extreme candidates, that looked at election denials and conspiracy theories and relitigating 2020,
the statewide totals that kyung lah is in maricopa county. she is keeping an eye on that critical district for us, and we ll talk much more about these vote totals with our panel next. as election night in america continues. now ports can know where every piece of cargo is. and where it s going. (dock worker) right on time. (vo) robots canan predict breakdowns and order their own replacement parts. (fororeman) nice work. (vo) and retailers can get ahahead of the fashion trend of the day with a new line tomorrow. with a verizon private 5g network, you can get more agility and security. giving you more control of your business. we call this enterprise intelligence. from the network america relies on. you pour your heart into everything you do, which is a lot. soake care of that heart with lipton. because sippin on unsweetened lipton can lp support a healthy heart. lion. stop chuggin . start sippin . i got into debt in college and, no matter how much i paid, it followed me everywhere