In 2015, then-candidate Donald Trump promised the country that if he became president, America would “win so much we’d be sick and tired of winning.” Sure, the 45th president racked up a few wins after his upset victory over the most entrenched political machine in modern American politics. Tax cuts that benefited the lion's share of workers, Middle East peace deals , and managing to navigate the presidency without starting another war despite the best efforts of his own appointees, at times, are all achievements worthy of praise.

Electorally, however, Trump has been largely unable to recreate the lightning in a bottle that was the 2016 election, in which he narrowly won the Electoral College while still losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million. Thanks to his unpopularity outside the Republican base and myriad scandals, real or imagined, promoted daily by legacy media, the GOP began taking major losses as soon as 2018.

The midterm elections are usually a struggle for the party in power. People prefer gridlock, and the results in 2018 were not surprising. Republicans fumbling the ball in 2020 was a much more disappointing result. Trump spent the last year of his presidency being played like a fiddle by Anthony Fauci and company, resulting in a recession and a massive spending binge that started the country down the road to record-high inflation and multitrillion-dollar deficits.

When Democrats got what they wanted from the president, they turned around and used the COVID-19 pandemic to beat a battered Trump down to the point that he lost handily to a near 80-year-old Joe Biden displaying severe cognitive decline on the rare occasion his handlers allowed him to campaign. To make matters worse, after his loss in 2020, a lame-duck Trump inexplicably told supporters not to vote in the Georgia Senate runoff elections, all but handing control of the chamber to Democrats.

The 2022 midterm elections were a bloodbath for the Right. From Dr. Oz to Herschel Walker to Doug Mastriano, Trump-endorsed candidates were destroyed by Democrats. As Trump blamed the establishment GOP, and the establishment blamed Trump, the Left went about the business of wielding power, to devastating results for families.

This week’s off-year election continued the trend of Republican losses. Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) defeated Republican Daniel Cameron by 5 points in deep-red Kentucky, and Ohioans voted, by a 57-43 margin, to enshrine abortion in the state’s constitution, erasing decades of work by the pro-life movement and Ohio’s GOP-controlled state legislature. Overturning Roe v. Wade was Trump’s crowning achievement, and Republicans have been woefully unable to articulate the pro-life message to the public. Red states such as Ohio, Kansas , and Montana have all enacted radical pro-abortion measures.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and political newcomer businessman Vivek Ramaswamy are correct to call out the GOP’s culture of losing, but will Republican politicians and voters listen? The GOP is flailing in its efforts to come up with a messaging strategy for 2024, the presumptive Republican nominee is more focused on relitigating his 2020 election loss than defeating Biden, and a large percentage of Trump campaign donations are going toward the former president’s legal bills . Hardly a winning strategy.

If the goal is to win and then govern effectively, there is some serious work to be done. If the goal is to continue the never-ending cycle of blame-shifting and fundraising, then Republicans should keep doing what they’ve done for the better part of the last decade. Let's hope we still have a republic by the time Republicans become as serious about governing as their opponents.

Brady Leonard ( @bradyleonard ) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast .